D  7i 


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Please  Note:  This  item  is  subject  to  recall. 

Date  Due 
MAR  2  4  2001 

1 

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CI  39  (5/97)                                                                          UCSD  Lib. 

THROUGH   THE   MAGIC   DOOR 


THROUGH 
THE     MAGIC     DOOR 


BY 


ARTHUR    CONAN    DOYLE 


\j    K 


NEW    YORK 

DOUBLEDAY,    PAGE   &   CO. 

MCMIX 


Copyright,  1908,  hy  The  McClure  Company 


Published,  April,  1908 


Copyright,  1906, 1907, 1908,  by  Arthur  Conan  Doyle 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 


I  CARE  not  how  humble  your  bookshelf  may 
be,  nor  how  lowly  the  room  which  it  adorns. 
Close  the  door  of  that  room  behind  you,  shut 
off  with  it  all  the  cares  of  the  outer  world, 
plunge  back  into  the  soothing  company  of  the 
great  dead,  and  then  you  are  through  the 
magic  portal  into  that  fair  land  whither  worry 
and  vexation  can  follow  you  no  more.  You 
have  left  all  that  is  vulgar  and  all  that  is 
sordid  behind  you.  There  stand  your  noble, 
silent  comrades,  waiting  in  their  ranks.  Pass 
your  eye  down  their  files.  Choose  your  man. 
And  then  you  have  but  to  hold  up  your  hand 
to  him  and  away  you  go  together  into  dream- 
land.    Surely  there  would  be  something  eerie 


4  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 

about  a  line  of  books  were  it  not  that  familiar- 
ity has  deadened  our  sense  of  it.  Each  is  a 
mummified  soul  embalmed  in  cere-cloth  and 
natron  of  leather  and  printer's  ink.  Each 
cover  of  a  true  book  enfolds  the  concentrated 
essence  of  a  man.  The  personalities  of  the 
writers  have  faded  into  the  thinnest  shadows, 
as  their  bodies  into  impalpable  dust,  yet  here 
are  their  very  spirits  at  your  command. 

It  is  our  familiarity  also  which  has  les- 
sened our  perception  of  the  miraculous  good 
fortune  which  we  enjoy.  Let  us  suppose  that 
we  were  suddenly  to  learn  that  Shakespeare 
had  returned  to  earth,  and  that  he  would  fa- 
vor any  of  us  with  an  hour  of  his  wit  and  his 
fancy.  How  eagerly  we  would  seek  him  out! 
And  yet  we  have  him — the  very  best  of  him — 
at  our  elbows  from  week  to  week,  and  hardly 
trouble  ourselves  to  put  out  our  hands  to 
beckon  him  down.  No  matter  what  mood  a 
man  may  be  in,  when  once  he  has  passed 
through  the  magic  door  he  can  svimmon  the 
world's  greatest  to  sympathize  with  him  in  it. 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  5 

If  he  be  thoughtful,  here  are  the  kings  of 
thought.  If  he  be  dreamy,  here  are  the  mas- 
ters of  fancy.  Or  is  it  amusement  that  he 
lacks?  He  can  signal  to  any  one  of  the 
world's  great  story-tellers,  and  out  comes  the 
dead  man  and  holds  him  enthralled  by  the 
hour.  The  dead  are  such  good  company  that 
one  may  come  to  think  too  little  of  the  living. 
It  is  a  real  and  a  pressing  danger  with  many 
of  us,  that  we  should  never  find  our  own 
thoughts  and  our  own  souls,  but  be  ever  ob- 
sessed by  the  dead.  Yet  second-hand  romance 
and  second-hand  emotion  are  surely  better 
than  the  dull  soul-killing  monotony  which  life 
brings  to  most  of  the  human  race.  But  best 
of  all  when  the  dead  man's  wisdom  and  the 
dead  man's  example  give  us  guidance  and 
strength  in  the  living  of  our  own  strenuous 
days. 

Come  through  the  magic  door  with  me, 
and  sit  here  on  the  green  settee,  where  you 
can  see  the  old  oak  case  with  its  untidy  lines 
of    volumes.     Smoking     is     not     forbidden. 


6  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 

Would  you  care  to  hear  me  talk  of  them? 
Well,  I  ask  nothing  better,  for  there  is  no  vol- 
ume there  which  is  not  a  dear,  personal  friend, 
and  what  can  a  man  talk  of  more  pleasantly 
than  that?  The  other  books  are  over  yon- 
der, but  these  are  my  own  favorites — the  ones 
I  care  to  re-read  and  to  have  near  my  elbow. 
There  is  not  a  tattered  cover  which  does  not 
bring  its  mellow  memories  to  me. 

Some  of  them  represent  those  little  sacri- 
fices which  make  a  possession  dearer.  You 
see  the  Hne  of  old,  brown  volumes  at  the  bot- 
tom? Every  one  of  those  represents  a  lunch. 
They  were  bought  in  my  student  days,  when 
times  were  not  too  affluent.  Threepence  was 
my  modest  allowance  for  my  midday  sandwich 
and  glass  of  beer;  but,  as  luck  would  have  it, 
my  way  to  the  classes  led  past  the  most  fasci- 
nating bookshop  in  the  world.  Outside  the 
door  of  it  stood  a  large  tub  filled  with  an  ever- 
changing  litter  of  tattered  books,  with  a  card 
above  which  announced  that  any  volume 
therein  could  be  purchased  for  the  identical 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  T 

sum  which  I  carried  in  my  pocket.  As  I  ap- 
proached it  a  combat  ever  raged  betwixt  the 
hunger  of  a  youthful  body  and  that  of  an 
inquiring  and  omnivorous  mind.  Five  times 
out  of  six  the  animal  won.  But  when  the 
mental  prevailed,  then  there  was  an  entrancing 
five  minutes'  digging  among  out-of-date  al- 
manacs, volumes  of  Scotch  theology,  and  ta- 
bles of  logarithms,  until  one  found  something 
which  made  it  all  worth  while.  If  you  will 
look  over  these  titles,  you  will  see  that  I  did 
not  do  so  very  badly.  Four  volumes  of  Gor- 
don's "Tacitus"  (life  is  too  short  to  read  orig- 
inals so  long  as  there  are  good  translations). 
Sir  William  Temple's  Essays,  Addison's 
works,  Swift's  "Tale  of  a  Tub,"  Clarendon's 
"History,"  "Gil  Bias,"  Buckingham's  Poems, 
Churchill's  Poems,  "Life  of  Bacon" — not  so 
bad  for  the  old  threepenny  tub. 

They  were  not  always  in  such  plebeian  com- 
pany. Look  at  the  thickness  of  the  rich 
leather,  and  the  richness  of  the  dim  gold  let- 
tering.    Once   they   adorned   the   shelves   of 


8  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 

some  noble  library,  and  even  among  the  odd 
almanacs  and  the  sermons  they  bore  the 
traces  of  their  former  greatness,  like  the 
faded  silk  dress  of  the  reduced  gentlewoman, 
a  present  pathos  but  a  glory  of  the  past. 

Reading  is  made  too  easy  nowadays,  with 
cheap  paper  editions  and  free  libraries.  A 
man  does  not  appreciate  at  its  full  worth  the 
thing  that  comes  to  him  without  effort.  Who 
now  ever  gets  the  thrill  which  Carlyle  felt 
when  he  hurried  home  with  the  six  volumes 
of  Gibbon's  "History"  under  his  arm,  his 
mind  just  starving  for  want  of  food,  to  devour 
them  at  the  rate  of  one  a  day?  A  book 
should  be  your  very  own  before  you  can  really 
get  the  taste  of  it,  and  unless  you  have  worked 
for  it,  you  will  never  have  the  true  inward 
pride  of  possession. 

If  I  had  to  choose  the  one  book  out  of  all 
that  line  from  which  I  have  had  most  jileasure 
and  most  profit,  I  should  point  to  yonder 
stained  copy  of  Macaulay's  "Essays."  It 
seems  entwined  into  my  whole  life  as  I  look 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  9 

backwards.  It  was  my  comrade  in  my  stu- 
dent days,  it  has  been  with  me  on  the  swelter- 
ing Gold  Coast,  and  it  formed  part  of  my 
humble  kit  when  I  went  a-whaling  in  the  Arc- 
tic. Honest  Scotch  harpooners  have  addled 
their  brains  over  it,  and  you  may  still  see  the 
grease  stains  where  the  second  engineer  grap- 
pled with  Frederick  the  Great.  Tattered  and 
dirty  and  worn,  no  gilt-edged  morocco-bound  [ 
volume  could  ever  take  its  place  for  me. 

What  a  noble  gateway  this  book  forms 
through  which  one  may  approach  the  study 
either  of  letters  or  of  history!  Milton, 
Machiavelli,  Hallam,  Southey,  Bunyan,  By- 
ron, Johnson,  Pitt,  Hampden,  Clive,  Has- 
tings, Chatham — what  nuclei  for  thought! 
With  a  good  grip  of  each  how  pleasant  and 
easy  to  fill  in  all  that  hes  between.  The  short, 
vivid  sentences,  the  broad  sweep  of  allusion, 
the  exact  detail,  they  all  throw  a  glamour 
round  the  subject  and  should  make  the  least 
studious  of  readers  desire  to  go  further.  If 
^Macaulay's  hand  cannot  lead  a  man  upon  those 


10  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 

pleasant  paths,  then,  indeed,  he  may  give  up 
all  hope  of  ever  finding  them. 

When  I  was  a  senior  schoolboy  this  book 
— not  this  very  volume,  for  it  had  an  even 
more  tattered  predecessor — opened  up  a  new 
world  to  me.  History  had  been  a  lesson  and 
abhorrent.  Suddenly  the  task  and  the  drudg- 
ery became  an  incursion  into  an  enchanted 
land,  a  land  of  color  and  beauty,  with  a  kind, 
wise  guide  to  point  the  path.  In  that  great 
style  of  his  I  loved  even  the  faults — indeed, 
now  that  I  come  to  think  of  it,  it  was  the  faults 
which  I  loved  best.  No  sentence  could  be  too 
stiff  with  rich  embroidery,  and  no  antithesis 
too  flowery.  It  pleased  me  to  read  that  "a 
universal  shout  of  laughter  from  the  Tagus 
to  the  Vistula  informed  the  Pope  that  the 
days  of  the  crusades  were  past,"  and  I  was  de- 
lighted to  learn  that  "Lady  Jerningham  kept 
a  vase  in  which  people  placed  foolish  verses, 
and  Mr.  Dash  wrote  verses  which  were  fit  to 
be  placed  in  Lady  Jerningham's  vase."  Those 
were  the  kind  of  sentences  which  used  to  fill 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  11 

me  with  a  vague  but  enduring  pleasure,  like 
chords  which  linger  in  the  musician's  ear.  A 
man  likes  a  plainer  literary  diet  as  he  grows 
older,  but  still  as  I  glance  over  the  Essays  I 
am  filled  with  admiration,  and  wonder  at  the 
alternate  power  of  handling  a  great  subject, 
and  of  adorning  it  by  delightful  detail — just 
a  bold  sweep  of  the  brush  and  then  the  most 
delicate  stippling.  As  he  leads  you  down  the 
path,  he  for  ever  indicates  the  alluring  side- 
tracks which  branch  away  from  it.  An  ad- 
mirable, if  somewhat  old-fashioned,  literary 
and  historical  education  might  be  effected  by 
working  through  every  book  which  is  alluded 
to  in  the  Essaj^s.  I  should  be  curious,  how- 
ever, to  know  the  exact  age  of  the  youth  when 
he  came  to  the  end  of  his  studies. 

I  wish  Macaulay  had  wintten  a  historical 
novel.  I  am  convinced  that  it  would  have 
been  a  great  one.  I  do  not  know  if  he  had 
the  power  of  drawing  an  imaginary  character, 
but  he  certainly  had  the  gift  of  reconstruct- 
ing a  dead  celebrity  to  a  remarkable  degree. 


12         THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
Look  at  the  simple  half -paragraph  in  which 
he    gives    us    Johnson    and    his    atmosphere. 
Was  ever  a  more  definite  picture  given  in  a 
shorter  space — 

"As  we  close  it,  the  club-room  is  before 
us,  and  the  table  on  which  stand  the  omelet 
for  Nugent,  and  the  lemons  for  Johnson. 
There  are  assembled  those  heads  which  live 
for  ever  on  the  canvas  of  Reynolds.  There 
are  the  spectacles  of  Burke,  and  the  tall  thin 
form  of  Langton,  the  courtly  sneer  of  Beau- 
clerk  and  the  beaming  smile  of  Garrick,  Gib- 
bon tapping  his  snuff-box,  and  Sir  Joshua 
with  his  trumpet  in  his  ear.  In  the  fore- 
ground is  that  strange  figure  which  is  as  fa- 
miliar to  us  as  the  figures  of  those  among 
whom  we  have  been  brought  up — the  gigantic 
body,  the  huge  massy  face,  seamed  with  the 
scars  of  disease,  the  brown  coat,  the  black 
worsted  stockings,  the  gray  wig  with  the 
scorched  foretop,  the  dirty  hands,  the  nails 
bitten  and  pared  to  the  quick.  We  see  the 
eyes    and    mouth    moving    with    convulsive 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  13 

twitches;  we  see  the  heavy  form  rolHng;  we 
hear  it  puffing-,  and  then  comes  the  'Why, 
sir!'  and  the  'What  then,  sir?'  and  the  'No, 
sir!'  and  the  'You  don't  see  your  way  through 
the  question,  sir!'  " 

It  is  etched  into  your  memory  for  ever. 

I  can  remember  that  when  I  visited 
London  at  the  age  of  sixteen  the  first  thing 
I  did  after  housing  my  luggage  was  to  make 
a  pilgrimage  to  Macaulay's  grave  where  he 
lies  in  Westminster  Abbey,  just  under  the 
shadow  of  Addison,  and  amid  the  dust  of  the 
poets  whom  he  had  loved  so  well.  It  was  the 
one  great  object  of  interest  which  London 
held  for  me.  And  so  it  might  well  be,  when  I 
think  of  all  I  oavc  him.  It  is  not  merely  the 
knowledge  and  the  stimulation  of  fresh  in- 
terests, but  it  is  the  charming  gentlemanly 
tone,  the  broad,  liberal  outlook,  the  general 
absence  of  bigotry  and  of  prejudice.  IMy 
judgment  now  confirms  all  that  I  felt  for  him 
then. 

My   four-volume   edition   of   the   History 


14  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
stands,  as  you  see,  to  the  right  of  the  Essays. 
Do  you  recollect  the  third  chapter  of  that 
work — the  one  which  reconstructs  the  England 
of  the  seventeenth  century?  It  has  always 
seemed  to  me  the  very  high-water  mark  of 
IVIacaulay's  powers,  with  its  marvelous  mix- 
ture of  precise  fact  and  romantic  phrasing. 
The  population  of  towns,  the  statistics  of  com- 
merce, the  prosaic  facts  of  life  are  all  trans- 
muted into  wonder  and  interest  by  the  han- 
dling of  the  master.  You  feel  that  he  could 
have  cast  a  glamour  over  the  multiplication 
table  had  he  set  himself  to  do  so.  Take  a 
single  concrete  example  of  what  I  mean. 
The  fact  that  a  Londoner  in  the  country,  or 
a  countryman  in  London,  felt  equally  out  of 
place  in  those  days  of  difficult  travel,  would 
seem  to  hardly  require  stating,  and  to  afford 
no  opportunity  of  leaving  a  strong  impres- 
sion upon  the  reader's  mind.  See  what  Ma- 
caulay  makes  of  it,  though  it  is  no  more  than 
a  hundred  other  paragraphs  which  discuss  a 
hundred  various  points — 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  15 
"A  cockney  in  a  rural  village,  was  stared 
at  as  much  as  if  he  had  intruded  into  a  kraal 
of  Hottentots.  On  the  other  hand,  when  the 
lord  of  a  Lincolnshire  or  Shropshire  manor  ap- 
peared in  Fleet  Street,  he  was  as  easily  dis- 
tinguished from  the  resident  population  as  a 
Turk  or  a  Lascar.  His  dress,  his  gait,  his 
accent,  the  manner  in  which  he  gazed  at  the 
shops,  stumbled  into  gutters,  ran  against  the 
porters,  and  stood  under  the  waterspouts, 
marked  him  out  as  an  excellent  subject  for  the 
operations  of  swindlers  and  banterers.  Bul- 
lies jostled  him  into  the  kennel.  Hackney 
coachmen  splashed  him  from  head  to  foot, 
thieves  explored  with  perfect  security  the  huge 
pockets  of  his  horseman's  coat,  while  he  stood 
entranced  by  the  splendor  of  the  Lord  Mayor's 
Show.  Money-droppers,  sore  from  the  cart's 
tail,  introduced  themselves  to  him,  and  ap- 
peared to  him  the  most  honest  friendly  gentle- 
men that  he  had  ever  seen.  Painted  women, 
the  refuse  of  Lewkner  Lane  and  Whetstone 
Park,  passed  themselves  on  him  for  countesses 


\6  TimOITGII  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
and  maids  of  honor.  If  he  asked  his  way  to 
St.  James',  his  informants  sent  him  to  Mile 
End.  If  he  went  into  a  shop,  he  was  instantly- 
discerned  to  be  a  fit  purchaser  of  everything 
that  nobody  else  would  buy,  of  second-hand 
embroidery,  copper  rings,  and  watches  that 
would  not  go.  If  he  rambled  into  any  fash- 
ionable coffee-house,  he  became  a  mark  for 
the  insolent  derision  of  fops,  and  the  grave 
waggery  of  Templars.  Enraged  and  morti- 
fied, he  soon  returned  to  his  mansion,  and  there, 
in  the  homage  of  his  tenants  and  the  conversa- 
tion of  his  boon  companions,  found  consola- 
tion for  the  vexations  and  humiliations  which 
he  had  undergone.  There  he  was  once  more  a 
great  man,  and  saw  nothing  above  himself 
except  when  at  the  assizes  he  took  his  seat 
on  the  bench  near  the  Judge,  or  when  at  the 
muster  of  the  militia  he  saluted  the  Lord  Lieu- 
tenant." 

On  the  whole,  I  should  put  this  detached 
chapter  of  description  at  the  very  head  of  his 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  17 

Essays,  though  it  happens  to  occur  in  another 
volume.  The  History  as  a  whole  does  not,  as 
it  seems  to  me,  reach  the  same  level  as  the 
shorter  articles.  One  cannot  but  feel  that  it 
is  a  brilliant  piece  of  special  pleading  from  a 
fervid  Whig,  and  that  there  must  be  more  to 
be  said  for  the  other  side  than  is  there  set  forth, 
Some  of  the  Essays  are  tinged  also,  no  doubt, 
by  his  own  political  and  religious  limitations. 
The  best  are  those  which  get  right  away  into 
the  broad  fields  of  literature  and  philosophy. 
Johnson,  Walpole,  ISIadame  D'Arblay,  Ad- 
dison, and  the  two  great  Indian  ones,  Clive 
and  Warren  Hastings,  are  my  own  favorites. 
Frederick  the  Great  too,  must  surely  stand  in 
the  first  rank.  Only  one  would  I  wish  to  elim- 
inate. It  is  the  diabolically  clever  criticism 
upon  Montgomery.  One  would  have  wished 
to  think  that  Macaulay's  heart  was  too  kind, 
and  his  soul  too  gentle,  to  pen  so  bitter  an  at- 
tack. Bad  work  will  sink  of  its  own  weight. 
It  is  not  necessary  to  souse  the  author  as  well. 
One  would  think  more  highly  of  the  man  if 


18  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 

he  had  not  done  that  savage  bit  of  work. 
I  don't  know  why  talking  of  JNIacauIay  al- 
ways makes  me  think  of  Scott,  whose  books, 
in  a  faded,  olive-backed  line,  have  a  shelf,  you 
see,  of  their  own.  Perhaps  it  is  that  they  both 
had  so  great  an  influence,  and  woke  such  ad- 
miration in  me.  Or  perhaps  it  is  the  real  sim- 
ilarity in  the  minds  and  characters  of  the  two 
men.  You  don't  see  it,  you  say?  Well,  just 
think  of  Scott's  "Border  Ballads,"  and  then  of 
Macaulay's  "Lays."  The  machines  must  be 
alike,  when  the  products  are  so  similar.  Each 
was  the  only  man  who  could  possibly  have 
written  the  poems  of  the  other.  What  swing 
and  dash  in  both  of  them!  What  a  love  of  all 
that  is  manly  and  noble  and  martial !  So  sim- 
ple, and  yet  so  strong.  But  there  are  minds 
on  which  strength  and  simplicity  are  thrown 
away.  They  think  that  unless  a  thing  is  ob- 
scure it  must  be  superficial,  whereas  it  is  often 
the  shallow  stream  which  is  turbid,  and  the 
deep  which  is  clear.  Do  you  remember  the 
fatuous  criticism  of  Matthew  Arnold  upon 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  19 

the  glorious  "Lays,"  where  he  calls  out  "Is 
this  poetry?"  after  quoting — 

"  And  how  can   man   die  better 
Than  facing  fearful  odds 
For  the  ashes  of  his  fathers 
And  the  Temples  of  his  Gods?" 

In  trying  to  show  that  Macaulay  had  not 
the  poetic  sense  he  was  really  showing  that  he 
himself  had  not  the  dramatic  sense.  The 
baldness  of  the  idea  and  of  the  language  had 
evidently  offended  him.  But  this  is  exactly 
where  the  true  merit  lies.  Macaulay  is  giving 
the  rough,  blunt  words  with  which  a  simple- 
minded  soldier  appeals  to  two  comrades  to 
help  him  in  a  deed  of  valor.  Any  high-flown 
sentiment  would  have  been  absolutely  out  of 
character.  The  lines  are,  I  think,  taken  with 
their  context,  admirable  ballad  poetry,  and 
have  just  the  dramatic  quality  and  sense  which 
a  ballad  poet  must  have.  That  opinion  of 
Arnold's  shook  my  faith  in  his  judgment,  and 
yet  I  would  forgive  a  good  deal  to  the  man 
who  wrote — 


20         THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 

"  One  more  charge  and  then  be  dumb, 
When  the  forts  of  Folly  fall, 
May  the  victors  when  they  come. 
Find  my  body  near  the  wall." 

Not  a  bad  verse  that  for  one's  life  aspiration. 
This  is  one  of  the  things  which  human  so- 
ciety has  not  yet  understood — the  value  of  a 
noble,  inspiriting  text.  When  it  does  we  shall 
meet  them  everywhere  engraved  on  appropri- 
ate places,  and  our  progress  through  the 
streets  will  be  brightened  and  ennobled  by  one 
continual  series  of  beautiful  mental  impulses 
and  images,  reflected  into  our  souls  from  the 
printed  thoughts  which  meet  our  eyes.  To 
think  that  we  should  walk  with  empty,  listless 
minds  while  all  this  splendid  material  is  run- 
ning to  waste.  I  do  not  mean  mere  Scrip- 
tural texts,  for  they  do  not  bear  the  same 
meaning  to  all,  though  what  human  creature 
can  fail  to  be  spurred  onwards  by  "Work 
while  it  is  day,  for  the  night  cometh  when  no 
man  can  work."  But  I  mean  those  beautiful 
thoughts — ^who  can  say  that  they  are  unin- 
spired   thoughts? — which    may    be    gathered 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  21 
from  a  hundred  authors  to  match  a  hundred 
uses.  A  fine  thought  in  fine  language  is  a 
most  precious  jewel,  and  should  not  be  hid 
away,  but  be  exposed  for  use  and  ornament. 
To  take  the  nearest  example,  there  is  a  horse- 
trough  across  the  road  from  my  house,  a  plain 
stone  trough,  and  no  man  could  pass  it  with 
any  feelings  save  vague  discontent  at  its  ugli- 
ness. But  suppose  that  on  its  front  slab  you 
print  the  verse  of  Coleridge — 

"  He  prayeth  best  who  loveth  best 
All  things,  both  great  and  small, 
For  the  dear  Lord  who  fashioned  him 
He  knows  and  loveth  all." 

I  fear  I  may  misquote,  for  I  have  not  "The 
Ancient  IMariner"  at  my  elbow,  but  even  as  it 
stands  does  it  not  elevate  the  horse-trough? 
We  all  do  this,  I  suppose,  in  a  small  way  for 
ourselves.  There  are  few  men  who  have  not 
some  chosen  quotations  printed  on  their  study 
mantelpieces,  or,  better  still,  in  their  hearts. 
Carlj^le's  transcription  of  "Rest!  Rest! 
Shall  I  not  have  all  Eternity  to  rest  in!"  is 


22  THROUGH  T?IE  MAGIC  DOOR 

a  pretty  good  spur  to  a  weary  man.  But 
what  we  need  is  a  more  general  application  of 
the  same  thing  for  public  and  not  for  private 
use,  until  people  understand  that  a  graven 
thought  is  as  beautiful  an  ornament  as  any 
graven  image,  striking  through  the  eye  right 
deep  down  into  the  soul. 

However,  all  this  has  nothing  to  do  with 
Macaulay's  glorious  lays,  save  that  when  you 
want  some  flowers  of  manliness  and  patriotism 
you  can  pluck  quite  a  bouquet  out  of  those. 
I  had  the  good  fortune  to  learn  the  Lay  of 
Horatius  off  by  heart  when  I  was  a  child, 
and  it  stamped  itself  on  my  plastic  mind,  so 
that  even  now  I  can  reel  oiF  almost  the  whole 
of  it.  Goldsmith  said  that  in  conversation  he 
was  like  the  man  who  had  a  thousand  j)ounds 
in  the  bank,  but  could  not  compete  with  the 
man  who  had  an  actual  sixpence  in  his  pocket. 
So  the  ballad  that  you  bear  in  your  mind  out- 
weighs the  whole  bookshelf  which  waits  for 
reference.  But  I  want  you  now  to  move  your 
eye  a  little  farther  down  the  shelf  to  the  line 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  23 

of  olive-green  volumes.  That  is  my  edition 
of  Scott.  But  surely  I  must  give  you  a  little 
breathing  space  before  I  venture  upon  them. 


II 

It  is  a  great  thing  to  start  life  with  a  small 
number  of  really  good  books  which  are  your 
very  own.  You  may  not  appreciate  them  at 
first.  You  may  pine  for  your  novel  of  crude 
and  unadulterated  adventure.  You  may,  and 
will,  give  it  the  preference  when  you  can. 
But  the  dull  days  come,  and  the  rainy  days 
come,  and  always  you  are  driven  to  fill  up  the 
chinks  of  your  reading  with  the  worthy  books 
which  wait  so  j^atiently  for  your  notice.  And 
then  suddenly,  on  a  day  which  marks  an 
epoch  in  your  life,  you  understand  the  difi*er- 
ence.  You  see,  like  a  flash,  how  the  one 
stands  for  nothing  and  the  other  for  literature. 
From  that  day  onwards  you  may  return  to 
your  crudities,  but  at  least  you  do  so  with 
some  standard  of  comparison  in  your  mind. 
You  can  never  be  the  same  as  you  were  be- 

24 


TimOUGII  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  25 

fore.  Then  gradually  the  good  thing  be- 
comes more  dear  to  you;  it  builds  itself  up 
with  your  growing  mind ;  it  becomes  a  part  of 
your  better  self,  and  so,  at  last,  you  can  look, 
as  I  do  now,  at  the  old  covers  and  love  them 
for  all  that  they  have  meant  in  the  past.  Yes, 
it  was  the  olive-green  line  of  Scott's  novels 
which  started  me  on  to  rhapsody.  They  w^re 
the  first  books  I  ever  owned — long,  long  be- 
fore I  could  appreciate  or  even  understand 
them.  But  at  last  I  realized  what  a  treasure 
they  were.  In  my  boyhood  I  read  them  by 
surreptitious  candle-ends  in  the  dead  of  the 
night,  when  the  sense  of  crime  added  a  new 
zest  to  the  story.  Perhaps  you  have  observed 
that  my  "Ivanhoe"  is  of  a  different  edition 
from  the  others.  The  first  copy  was  left  in 
the  grass  by  the  side  of  a  stream,  fell  into 
the  water,  and  was  eventually  picked  up  three 
days  later,  swollen  and  decomposed,  upon  a 
mud-bank.  I  think  I  may  say,  however,  that 
I  had  worn  it  out  before  I  lost  it.  Indeed, 
it  was  perhaps  as  well  that  it  was  some  years 


26  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 

before  it  was  replaced,  for  my  instinct  was 
always  to  read  it  again  instead  of  breaking 
fresh  ground. 

I  remember  the  late  James  Payn  telling  the 
anecdote  that  he  and  two  literary  friends 
agreed  to  write  down  what  scene  in  fiction  they 
thought  the  most  dramatic,  and  that  on  exam- 
ining the  papers  it  was  found  that  all  three 
had  chosen  the  same.  It  was  the  moment 
when  the  unknown  knight,  at  Ashby-de-la- 
Zouch,  riding  past  the  pavilions  of  the  lesser 
men,  strikes  with  the  sharp  end  of  his  lance,  in 
a  challenge  to  mortal  combat,  the  shield  of  the 
formidable  Templar.  It  was,  indeed,  a  splen- 
did moment!  What  matter  that  no  Templar 
was  allowed  by  the  rules  of  his  Order  to  take 
part  in  so  secular  and  frivolous  an  affair  as  a 
tournament?  It  is  the  privilege  of  great  mas- 
ters to  make  things  so,  and  it  is  a  churlish  thing 
to  gainsay  it.  Was  it  not  Wendell  Holmes 
who  described  the  prosaic  man,  who  enters  a 
drawing-room  with  a  couple  of  facts,  like  ill- 
conditioned  bull-dogs  at  his  heels,  ready  to  let 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  27 
them  loose  on  any  play  of  fancy?  The  great 
writer  can  never  go  wrong.  If  Shakespeare 
gives  a  sea-coast  to  Bohemia,  or  if  Victor 
Hugo  calls  an  English  prize-fighter  Mr.  Jim- 
John-Jack — well,  it  was  so,  and  that's  an  end 
of  it.  "There  is  no  second  line  of  rails  at  that 
point,"  said  an  editor  to  a  minor  author.  "I 
make  a  second  line,"  said  the  author;  and  he 
was  within  his  rights,  if  he  can  carry  his 
readers'  conviction  with  him. 

But  this  is  a  digression  from  "Ivanhoe." 
What  a  book  it  is!  The  second  greatest  his- 
torical novel  in  our  language,  I  think.  Every 
successive  reading  has  deepened  my  admiration 
for  it.  Scott's  soldiers  are  always  as  good  as  his 
women  (with  exceptions)  are  weak;  but  here, 
while  the  soldiers  are  at  their  very  best,  the 
romantic  figure  of  Rebecca  redeems  the  female 
side  of  the  story  from  the  usual  commonplace 
routine.  Scott  drew  manly  men  because  he 
was  a  manly  man  himself,  and  found  the  task 
a  sympathetic  one. 

He  drew  young  heroines  because  a  conven- 


28  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 

tion  demanded  it,  whieh  he  had  never  the  hard- 
ihood to  break.  It  is  only  when  we  get  him 
for  a  dozen  chapters  on  end  with  a  minimum 
of  petticoat — in  the  long  stretch,  for  example, 
from  the  beginning  of  the  Tournament  to  the 
end  of  the  Friar  Tuck  incident — that  we  real- 
ize the  height  of  continued  romantic  narrative 
to  which  he  could  attain.  I  don't  think  in  the 
whole  range  of  our  literature  we  have  a  finer 
sustained  flight  than  that. 

There  is,  I  admit,  an  intolerable  amount  of 
redundant  verbiage  in  Scott's  novels.  Those 
endless  and  unnecessary  introductions  make 
the  shell  very  thick  before  you  come  to  the 
oyster.  They  are  often  admirable  in  them- 
selves, learned,  witty,  picturesque,  but  with  no 
relation  or  proportion  to  the  story  which  they 
are  supposed  to  introduce.  Like  so  much  of 
our  English  fiction,  they  are  very  good  matter 
in  a  very  bad  place.  Digression  and  want  of 
method  and  order  are  traditional  national  sins. 
Fancy  introducing  an  essay  on  how  to  live  on 
nothing  a  year  as  Thackeray  did  in  "Vanity 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  29 
Fair,"  or  sandwiching  in  a  ghost  story  as 
Dickens  has  dared  to  do.  As  well  might  a 
dramatic  author  rush  up  to  the  footlights  and 
begin  telling  anecdotes  while  his  play  was  sus- 
pending its  action  and  his  characters  waiting 
wearily  behind  him.  It  is  all  wrong,  though 
every  great  name  can  be  quoted  in  support  of 
it.  Our  sense  of  form  is  lamentably  lacking, 
and  Sir  Walter  sinned  with  the  rest.  But 
get  past  all  that  to  a  crisis  in  the  real  story, 
and  who  finds  the  terse  phrase,  the  short  fire- 
word,  so  surely  as  he?  Do  you  remember 
when  the  reckless  Sergeant  of  Dragoons 
stands  at  last  before  the  grim  Puritan,  upon 
whose  head  a  price  has  been  set:  "A  thou- 
sand marks  or  a  bed  of  heather!"  says  he,  as 
he  draws.  The  Puritan  draws  also:  "The 
Sword  of  the  Lord  and  of  Gideon!"  says  he. 
No  verbiage  there!  But  the  very  spirit  of 
either  man  and  of  either  party,  in  the  few  stern 
words,  which  haunt  your  mind.  "Bows  and 
Bills!"  cry  the  Saxon  Varangians,  as  the 
IVIoslem  horse  charges  home.     You  feel  it  is 


30  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
just  what  they  must  have  cried.  Even  more 
terse  and  husinesshke  was  the  actual  hattle-cry 
of  the  fathers  of  the  same  men  on  that  long- 
drawn  day  when  they  fought  under  the  "Red 
Dragon  of  Wessex"  on  the  low  ridge  at  Has- 
tings. "Out!  Out!"  they  roared,  as  the  Nor- 
man chivalry  broke  uj)on  them.  Terse, 
strong,  prosaic — the  very  genius  of  the  race 
was  in  the  cry. 

Is  it  that  the  higher  emotions  are  not  there? 
Or  is  it  that  they  are  damped  down  and  cov- 
ered over  as  too  precious  to  be  exhibited? 
Something  of  each,  perhaps.  I  once  met  the 
widow  of  the  man  who,  as  a  young  signal  mid- 
shipman, had  taken  Nelson's  famous  message 
from  the  Signal  Yeoman  and  communicated  it 
to  the  ship's  company.  The  officers  were  im- 
pressed. The  men  were  not.  "Duty!"  they 
muttered.  "We've  always  done  it.  Why 
not?"  Anything  in  the  least  high-falutin' 
would  depress,  not  exalt,  a  British  company. 
It  is  the  under  statement  which  delights  them. 
German  troops  can  march  to  battle  singing 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  31 

Luther's  hymns.  Frenchmen  will  work  them- 
selves into  a  frenzy  by  a  song  of  glory  and  of 
Fatherland.  Our  martial  poets  need  not 
trouble  to  imitate — or  at  least  need  not  imagine 
that  if  they  do  so  they  will  ever  supply  a  want 
to  the  British  soldier.  Our  sailors  working 
the  heavy  guns  in  South  Africa  sang: 
"Here's  another  lump  of  sugar  for  the  Bird." 
I  saw  a  regiment  go  into  action  to  the  refrain 
of  "A  little  bit  off  the  top."  The  martial 
poet  aforesaid,  unless  he  had  the  genius  and 
the  insight  of  a  Kipling,  would  have  wasted  a 
good  deal  of  ink  before  he  had  got  down  to 
such  chants  as  these.  The  Russians  are  not 
unlike  us  in  this  respect.  I  remember  reading 
of  some  column  ascending  a  breach  and  sing- 
ing lustily  from  start  to  finish,  until  a  few 
survivors  were  left  victorious  upon  the  crest 
with  the  song  still  going.  A  spectator  in- 
quired what  wondrous  chant  it  was  which  had 
warmed  them  to  such  a  deed  of  valor,  and  he 
found  that  the  exact  meaning  of  the  words, 
endlessly  repeated,  was  "Ivan  is  in  the  garden 


32         THROUGH  THE  INIAGIC  DOOR 
picking  cabbages."     The  fact  is,   I   suppose, 
that  a  mere  monotonous  sound  may  take  the 
place  of  the  tom-tom  of  savage  warfare,  and 
hypnotize  the  soldier  into  valor. 

Our  cousins  across  the  Atlantic  have  the 
same  blending  of  the  comic  with  their  most 
serious  work.  Take  the  songs  which  they 
sang  during  the  most  bloody  war  which  the 
Anglo-Celtic  race  has  ever  waged — the  only 
war  in  which  it  could  have  been  said  that  they 
were  stretched  to  their  uttermost  and  showed 
their  true  form — "Tramp,  tramp,  tramp," 
"John  Brown's  Body,"  "Marching  through 
Georgia" — all  had  a  playful  humor  running 
through  them.  Only  one  exception  do  I 
know,  and  that  is  the  most  tremendous  war- 
song  I  can  recall.  Even  an  outsider  in  time 
of  peace  can  hardly  read  it  without  emotion. 
I  mean,  of  course,  Julia  Ward  Howe's  "War- 
Song  of  the  Republic,"  with  the  choral  open- 
ing line:  "Mine  eyes  have  seen  the  glory  of 
the  coming  of  the  Lord."     If  that  were  ever 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  33 

sung  upon  a  battlefield  the  effect  must  have 
been  terrific. 

A  long  digression,  is  it  not?  But  that  is 
the  worst  of  the  thoughts  at  the  other  side  of 
the  INIagic  Door.  You  can't  pull  one  out 
without  a  dozen  being  entangled  with  it. 
But  it  was  Scott's  soldiers  that  I  was  talking 
of,  and  I  was  saying  that  there  is  nothing 
theatrical,  no  posing,  no  heroics  (the  thing  of 
all  others  which  the  hero  abominates) ,  but  just 
the  short  bluff  word  and  the  simple  manly 
ways,  with  every  expression  and  metaphor 
drawn  from  within  his  natural  range  of 
thought.  What  a  pity  it  is  that  he,  with  his 
keen  appreciation  of  the  soldier,  gave  us  so 
little  of  those  soldiers  who  were  his  own  con- 
temporaries— the  finest,  perhaps,  that  the 
world  has  ever  seen.  It  is  true  that  he  wrote  a 
life  of  the  great  Soldier  Emperor,  but  that 
was  the  one  piece  of  hackwork  of  his  career. 
How  could  a  Tory  patriot,  w^hose  whole  train- 
ing had  been  to   look  upon   Napoleon   as   a 


34  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
nkalignant  Demon,  do  justice  to  such  a  theme? 
But  the  Europe  of  those  days  was  full  of  ma- 
terial which  he  of  all  men  could  have  drawn 
with  a  sympathetic  hand.  What  would  we 
not  give  for  a  portrait  of  one  of  Murat's  light- 
cavalrymen  or  of  a  Grenadier  of  the  Old 
Guard,  drawn  with  the  same  hold  strokes  as 
the  Rittmeister  of  Gustavus  or  the  archers  of 
the  French  King's  Guard  in  "Quentin  Dur- 
ward"? 

In  his  visit  to  Paris  Scott  must  have  seen 
many  of  those  iron  men  who  during  the  pre- 
ceding twenty  years  had  been  the  scourge  and 
also  the  redemption  of  Europe.  To  us  the 
soldiers  who  scowled  at  him  from  the  side- 
walks in  1814  would  have  been  as  interesting 
and  as  much  romantic  figures  of  the  past  as 
the  mail-clad  knights  or  ruffling  cavaliers  of 
his  novels.  A  picture  from  the  life  of  a  Pen- 
insular veteran,  with  his  views  upon  the  Duke, 
would  be  as  striking  as  Dugald  Dalgetty  from 
the  German  wars.  But  then  no  man  ever  does 
realize  the  true  interest  of  the  age  in  which  he 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  35 

happens  to  live.  All  sense  of  proportion  is 
lost,  and  the  little  thing  hard-by  obscures  the 
great  thing  at  a  distance.  It  is  easy  in  the 
dark  to  confuse  the  fire-fly  and  the  star. 
Fancy,  for  example,  the  Old  Masters  seeking 
their  subjects  in  inn  parlors,  or  St.  Sebastians, 
while  Columbus  was  discovering  America  be- 
fore their  very  faces. 

I  have  said  that  I  think  "Ivanhoe"  the  best 
of  Scott's  novels.  I  suj)pose  most  people 
would  subscribe  to  that.  But  how  about  the 
second  best?  It  speaks  well  for  their  general 
average  that  there  is  hardly  one  among  them 
which  might  not  find  some  admirers  who 
w^ould  vote  it  to  a  place  of  honor.  To  the 
Scottish-born  man  those  novels  which  deal  with 
Scottish  life  and  character  have  a  quality  of 
raciness  which  gives  them  a  place  apart. 
There  is  a  rich  humor  of  the  soil  in  such  books 
as  "Old  Mortality,"  "The  Antiquary,"  and 
"Rob  Roy,"  which  puts  them  in  a  different 
class  from  the  others.  His  old  Scottish 
women  are,  next  to  his  soldiers,  the  best  series 


36  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
of  types  that  he  has  drawn.  At  the  same 
time  it  must  be  admitted  that  merit  which  is 
associated  with  dialect  has  such  hmitations 
that  it  can  never  take  the  same  place  as  work 
which  makes  an  equal  appeal  to  all  the  world. 
On  the  whole,  perhaps,  "Quentin  Durward," 
on  account  of  its  wider  interests,  its  strong 
character-drawing,  and  the  European  im- 
portance of  the  events  and  people  described, 
would  have  my  vote  for  the  second  place.  It 
is  the  father  of  all  those  sword-and-cape 
novels  which  have  formed  so  numerous  an  ad- 
dition to  the  light  literature  of  the  last  cen- 
tury. The  pictures  of  Charles  the  Bold  and 
of  the  unspeakable  Louis  are  extraordinarily 
vivid.  I  can  see  those  two  deadly  enemies 
watching  the  hounds  chasing  the  herald,  and 
clinging  to  each  other  in  the  convulsions  of 
their  cruel  mirth,  more  clearly  than  most 
things  which  my  eyes  have  actually  rested 
upon. 

The  portrait  of  Louis  with  his  astuteness, 
his  cruelty,  his  superstition  and  his  cowardice 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  37 

is  followed  closely  from  Comines,  and  is  the 
more  effective  when  set  up  against  his  bluff 
and  warlike  rival.  It  is  not  often  that 
historical  characters  work  out  in  their  actual 
physique  exactly  as  one  would  picture  them 
to  be,  but  in  the  High  Church  of  Innsbruck 
I  have  seen  effigies  of  Louis  and  Charles 
which  might  have  walked  from  the  very  pages 
of  Scott — Louis,  thin,  ascetic,  varminty;  and 
Charles  with  the  head  of  a  prize  fighter.  It 
is  hard  on  us  when  a  portrait  upsets  all  our 
preconceived  ideas,  when,  for  example,  we  see 
in  the  National  Portrait  Gallery  a  man  with  a 
noble,  olive-tinted,  poetic  face,  and  with  a  start 
read  beneath  it  that  it  is  the  wicked  Judge 
Jeffreys.  Occasionally,  however,  as  at  Inns- 
bruck, we  are  absolutely  satisfied.  I  have  be- 
fore me  on  the  mantelpiece  yonder  a  portrait 
of  a  painting  which  represents  Queen  Mary's 
Bothwell.  Take  it  down  and  look  at  it. 
]\Iark  the  big  head,  fit  to  conceive  large 
schemes;  the  strong  animal  face,  made  to  cap- 
tivate a  sensitive,  feminine  woman;  the  bru- 


38  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 

tally  forceful  features — the  mouth  with  a 
suggestion  of  wild  boars'  tusks  behind  it,  the 
beard  which  could  bristle  with  fury:  the  whole 
man  and  his  life-history  are  revealed  in  that 
picture.  I  wonder  if  Scott  had  ever  seen  the 
original  which  hangs  at  the  Hepburn  family 
seat? 

Personally,  I  have  always  had  a  very  high 
opinion  of  a  novel  which  the  critics  have  used 
somewhat  harshly,  and  which  came  almost 
the  last  from  his  tired  pen.  I  mean  "Count 
Robert  of  Paris."  I  am  convinced  that  if  it 
had  been  the  first,  instead  of  the  last,  of  the 
series  it  would  have  attracted  as  much  atten- 
tion as  "Waverley."  I  can  understand  the 
state  of  mind  of  the  expert,  who  cried  out  in 
mingled  admiration  and  despair:  "I  have 
studied  the  conditions  of  Byzantine  Society 
all  my  life,  and  here  comes  a  Scotch  lawyer 
who  makes  the  whole  thing  clear  to  me  in  a 
flash!"  Many  men  could  draw  with  more  or 
less  success  Norman  England,  or  mediaeval 
France,    but    to    reconstruct    a    whole    dead 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  39 

civilization  in  so  plausible  a  way,  with  such 
dignity  and  such  minuteness  of  detail,  is,  I 
should  think,  a  most  wonderful  tour  de  force. 
His  failing  health  showed  itself  before  the  end 
of  the  novel,  but  had  the  latter  half  equaled 
the  first,  and  contained  scenes  of  such 
humor  as  Anna  Comnena  reading  aloud  her 
father's  exploits,  or  of  such  majesty  as  the 
account  of  the  muster  of  the  Crusaders  upon 
the  shores  of  the  Bosphorus,  then  the  book 
could  not  have  been  gainsaid  its  rightful  place 
in  the  very  front  rank  of  the  novels. 

I  would  that  he  had  carried  on  his  narra- 
tive, and  given  us  a  glimpse  of  the  actual 
progress  of  the  First  Crusade.  What  an 
incident!  Was  ever  anything  in  the  world's 
history  like  it?  It  had  what  historical  inci- 
dents seldom  have,  a  definite  beginning, 
middle  and  end,  from  the  half -crazed  preach- 
ing of  Peter  down  to  the  Fall  of  Jerusalem. 
Those  leaders!  It  would  take  a  second 
Homer  to  do  them  justice.  Godfrey  the 
perfect  soldier  and  leader,  Bohemund  the  un- 


40  THROUGH  Tin<:  INIAGIC  DOOR 
scrupulous  and  formidable,  Tancred  the  ideal 
knight  errant,  Robert  of  Normandy  the  lialf- 
mad  hero!  Here  is  material  so  rich  that  one 
feels  one  is  not  worthy  to  handle  it.  What 
richest  imagination  could  ever  evolve  anything 
more  marvelous  and  thrilling  than  the  actual 
historical  facts? 

But  what  a  glorious  brotherhood  the  novels 
are!  Think  of  the  pure  romance  of  "The 
Talisman" ;  the  exquisite  picture  of  Hebridean 
life  in  "The  Pirate";  the  splendid  reproduction 
of  Elizabethan  England  in  "Kenilworth"; 
the  rich  humor  of  the  "Legend  of  Montrose"; 
above  all,  bear  in  mind  that  in  all  that  splendid 
series,  written  in  a  coarse  age,  there  is  not  one 
word  to  offend  the  most  sensitive  ear,  and  it 
is  borne  in  upon  one  how  great  and  noble  a 
man  was  Walter  Scott,  and  how  high  the  serv- 
ice which  he  did  for  literature  and  for  hu- 
manity. 

For  that  reason  his  life  is  good  reading,  and 
there  it  is  on  the  same  shelf  as  the  novels. 
Lockhart  was,  of  course,  his  son-in-law  and  his 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  41 

admiring  friend.  The  ideal  biographer  should 
be  a  perfectly  impartial  man,  with  a  sympa- 
thetic mind,  but  a  stern  determination  to  tell 
the  absolute  truth.  One  would  like  the  frail, 
human  side  of  a  man  as  well  as  the  other.  I 
cannot  believe  that  anj'^  one  in  the  world  was 
ever  quite  so  good  as  the  subject  of  most  of  our 
biograj)hies.  Surely  these  worthy  people 
swore  a  little  sometimes,  or  had  a  keen  eye  for 
a  pretty  face,  or  opened  the  second  bottle  when 
they  would  have  done  better  to  stop  at  the  first, 
or  did  something  to  make  us  feel  that  they  were 
men  and  brothers.  They  need  not  go  the 
length  of  the  lady  who  began  a  biography  of 

her  deceased  husband  with  the  words —  "D 

was  a  dirty  man,"  but  the  books  certainly 
would  be  more  readable,  and  the  subjects  more 
lovable  too,  if  we  had  greater  light  and  shade 
in  the  picture. 

But  I  am  sure  that  the  more  one  knew  of 
Scott  the  more  one  would  have  admired  him. 
He  lived  in  a  drinking  age,  and  in  a  drinking 
country,  and  I  have  not  a  doubt  that  he  took 


42  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 

an  allowance  of  toddy  occasionally  of  an 
evening  which  would  have  laid  his  feeble  suc- 
cessors under  the  table.  His  last  years,  at 
least,  poor  fellow,  w^ere  abstemious  enough, 
when  he  sipped  his  barley-water,  while  the 
others  passed  the  decanter.  But  what  a 
high-souled  chivalrous  gentleman  he  w^as, 
with  how  fine  a  sense  of  honor,  translating  it- 
self not  into  empty  j^hrases,  but  into  years  of 
labor  and  denial!  You  remember  how  he  be- 
came sleeping  partner  in  a  printing  house,  and 
so  involved  himself  in  its  failure.  There  was 
a  legal,  but  very  little  moral,  claim  against  him, 
and  no  one  could  have  blamed  him  had  he 
cleared  the  account  by  a  bankruptcy,  which 
would  have  enabled  him  to  become  a  rich  man 
again  within  a  few  years.  Yet  he  took  the 
whole  burden  upon  himself  and  bore  it  for  the 
rest  of  his  life,  spending  his  work,  his  time,  and 
his  health  in  the  one  long  effort  to  save  his 
honor  from  the  shadow  of  a  stain.  It  was 
nearly  a  hundred  thousand  pounds,  I  think, 
which  he  passed  on  to  the  creditors — a  great 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  43 

record,  a  hundred  thousand  pounds,  with  his 
hfe  thrown  in. 

And  what  a  power  of  work  he  had !  It  was 
superhuman.  Only  the  man  who  has  tried  to 
write  fiction  himself  knows  what  it  means 
when  it  is  recorded  that  Scott  produced  two 
of  his  long  novels  in  one  single  year.  I  re- 
member reading  in  some  book  of  reminiscences 
— on  second  thoughts  it  was  in  Lockhart  him- 
self— how  the  writer  had  lodged  in  some  rooms 
in  Castle  Street,  Edinburgh,  and  how  he  had 
seen  all  evening  the  silhouette  of  a  man  out- 
lined on  the  blind  of  the  opposite  house.  All 
evening  the  man  wrote,  and  the  observer  could 
see  the  shadow  hand  conveying  the  sheets  of 
paper  from  the  desk  to  the  pile  at  the  side. 
He  went  to  a  party  and  returned,  but  still  the 
hand  was  moving  the  sheets.  Next  morning 
he  was  told  that  the  rooms  opi)osite  were  occu- 
pied by  Walter  Scott. 

A  curious  glimpse  into  the  psychology  of 
the  writer  of  fiction  is  shown  by  the  fact  that 
he  wrote  two  of  his  books — good  ones,  too — 


44  TllUOUCill   THE  MAGIC  DOOR 

at  a  time  when  his  health  was  such  tliat  he 
could  not  afterwards  remember  one  word  of 
them,  and  listened  to  them  when  they  were 
read  to  him  as  if  he  were  hearing  the  work  of 
another  man.  Apparently  the  simplest  proc- 
esses of  the  brain,  such  as  ordinary  memory, 
were  in  complete  abeyance,  and  yet  the  very 
highest  and  most  complex  facultj'^ — imagina- 
tion in  its  supreme  form — was  absolutely  un- 
impaired. It  is  an  extraordinary  fact,  and 
one  to  be  2:)ondered  over.  It  gives  some  sup- 
port to  the  feeling  which  every  writer  of  imag- 
inative work  must  have,  that  his  supreme  work 
comes  to  him  in  some  strange  way  from  with- 
out, and  that  he  is  only  the  medium  for  placing 
it  uj^on  the  paper.  The  creative  thought — 
the  germ  thought  from  which  a  larger  growth 
is  to  come,  flies  through  his  brain  like  a  bullet. 
He  is  surprised  at  his  own  idea,  with  no  con- 
scious sense  of  having  originated  it.  And 
here  we  have  a  man,  with  all  other  brain  func- 
tions paralyzed,  producing  this  magnificent 
work.     Is  it  possible  that  we  are  indeed  but 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  45 

conduit  pipes  from  the  infinite  reservoir  of  the 
unknown?  Certainly  it  is  always  our  best 
work  which  leaves  the  least  sense  of  personal 
effort. 

And  to  pursue  this  line  of  thought,  is  it 
possible  that  frail  physical  j)owers  and  an  un- 
stable nervous  system,  by  keeping  a  man's  ma- 
terialism at  its  lowest,  render  him  a  more  fitting 
agent  for  these  spiritual  uses?  It  is  an  old 
tag  that 

"  Great    Genius    is    to   madness    close   allied. 
And  thin  partitions  do  those  rooms  divide." 

But,  apart  from  genius,  even  a  moderate  fac- 
ulty for  imaginative  work  seems  to  me  to 
weaken  seriously  the  ties  between  the  soul  and 
the  body. 

Look  at  the  British  poets  of  a  century  ago : 
Chatterton,  Burns,  Shelley,  Keats,  Byron. 
Burns  was  the  oldest  of  that  brilliant  band,  yet 
Burns  was  only  thirty-eight  when  he  passed 
away,  "burned  out,"  as  his  brother  terribly  ex- 
pressed it.     Shelley,  it  is  true,  died  by  acci- 


4G  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
dent,  and  Chatterton  by  poison,  but  suicide  is 
in  itself  a  sign  of  a  morbid  state.  It  is  true 
that  Rogers  lived  to  be  almost  a  centenarian, 
but  he  was  banker  first  and  poet  afterwards. 
Wordsworth,  Tennyson,  and  Browning  have 
all  raised  the  average  age  of  the  poets,  but  for 
some  reason  the  novelists,  especially  of  late 
5^ears,  have  a  deplorable  record.  They  will 
end  by  being  scheduled  with  the  white-lead 
workers  and  other  dangerous  trades.  Look 
at  the  really  shocking  case  of  the  young  Amer- 
icans, for  example.  What  a  band  of  promis- 
ing young  writers  have  in  a  few  years  been 
swept  away!  There  was  the  author  of  that 
admirable  book,  "David  Harum";  there  was 
Frank  Norris,  a  man  who  had  in  him,  I  think, 
the  seeds  of  greatness  more  than  almost  any 
living  writer.  His  "Pit"  seemed  to  me  one  of 
the  finest  American  novels.  He  also  died  a 
premature  death.  Then  there  was  Stephen 
Crane — a  man  who  had  also  done  most  bril- 
liant work,  and  there  was  Harold  Frederic, 
another  master-craftsman.     Is  there  any  pro- 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  47 

fession  in  the  world  which  in  proportion  to  its 
numbers  could  show  such  losses  as  that?  In 
the  meantime,  out  of  our  own  men  Robert 
Louis  Stevenson  is  gone,  and  Henry  Seton 
JNIerriman,  and  many  another. 

Even  those  great  men  who  are  usually 
spoken  of  as  if  they  had  rounded  off  their 
career  were  really  premature  in  their  end. 
Thackeray,  for  example,  in  spite  of  his  snowy 
head,  was  only  52;  Dickens  attained  the  age 
of  58;  on  the  whole.  Sir  Walter,  with  his  61 
years  of  life,  although  he  never  wrote  a  novel 
until  he  was  over  40,  had,  fortunately  for  the 
world,  a  longer  working  career  than  most  of 
his  brethren. 

He  employed  his  creative  faculty  for  about 
twenty  years,  which  is  as  much,  I  suppose,  as 
Shakespeare  did.  The  bard  of  Avon  is  an- 
other example  of  the  limited  tenure  which 
Genius  has  of  life,  though  I  believe  that  he 
outlived  the  greater  part  of  his  own  family, 
who  were  not  a  healthy  stock.  He  died,  I 
should  judge,  of  some  nervous  disease;  that 


48  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
is  shown  by  the  progressive  degeneration  of 
his  signature.  Probably  it  was  locomotor 
ataxy,  which  is  the  special  scourge  of  the  imag- 
inative man.  Heine,  Daudet,  and  how  many 
more,  were  its  victims.  As  to  the  tradition, 
first  mentioned  long  after  his  death,  that  he 
died  of  a  fever  contracted  from  a  drinking 
bout,  it  is  absurd  on  the  face  of  it,  since  no 
such  fever  is  known  to  science.  But  a  very 
moderate  di'inking  bout  would  be  extremely 
likely  to  bring  a  chronic  nervous  complaint  to 
a  disastrous  end. 

One  other  remark  upon  Scott  before  I 
pass  on  from  that  line  of  green  volumes  which 
has  made  me  so  digressive  and  so  garrulous. 
No  account  of  his  character  is  comj)lete  which 
does  not  deal  with  the  strange,  secretive  vein 
which  ran  through  his  nature.  Not  only  did 
he  stretch  the  truth  on  many  occasions  in  order 
to  conceal  the  fact  that  he  was  the  author  of 
the  famous  novels,  but  even  intimate  friends 
who  met  him  day  by  day  were  not  aware  that 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  49 

he  was  the  man  about  whom  the  whole  of 
Europe  was  talking.  Even  his  wife  was 
ignorant  of  his  pecuniary  liabilities  until  the 
crash  of  the  Ballantyne  firm  told  her  for  the 
first  time  that  they  were  sharers  in  the  ruin. 
A  psychologist  might  trace  this  strange  twist 
of  his  mind  in  the  numerous  elfish  Fenella- 
like  characters  who  flit  about  and  keep  their 
irritating  secret  through  the  long  chapters  of 
so  many  of  his  novels. 

It's  a  sad  book,  Lockhart's  "Life."  It 
leaves  gloom  in  the  mind.  The  sight  of  this 
weary  giant,  staggering  along,  burdened  with 
debt,  overladen  with  work,  his  wife  dead,  his 
nerves  broken,  and  nothing  intact  but  his 
honor,  is  one  of  the  most  moving  in  the  history 
of  literature.  But  they  pass,  these  clouds,  and 
all  that  is  left  is  the  memory  of  the  supremely 
noble  man,  who  would  not  be  bent,  but  faced 
Fate  to  the  last,  and  died  in  his  tracks  with- 
out a  whimper.  He  sampled  every  human 
emotion.     Great  was  his  joy  and  great  his  sue- 


50         THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
cess,   great  was  his  downfall  and  bitter  his 
grief.     But  of  all  the  sons  of  men  I  don't 
think  there  are  many  greater  than  he  who  lies 
under  the  great  slab  at  Dryburgh. 


Ill 

We  can  pass  the  long  green  ranks  of  the 
Waverley  Novels  and  Lockhart's  "Life"  which 
flanks  them.  Here  is  heavier  metal  in  the 
four  big  gray  volumes  beyond.  They  are  an 
old-fashioned  large-print  edition  of  Boswell's 
"Life  of  Johnson."  I  emphasize  the  large 
print,  for  that  is  the  weak  point  of  most  of 
the  cheap  editions  of  English  Classics  which 
come  now  into  the  market.  With  subjects 
which  are  in  the  least  archaic  or  abstruse  you 
need  good  clear  type  to  help  you  on  your  way. 
The  other  is  good  neither  for  your  eyes  nor  for 
your  temper.  Better  pay  a  little  more  and 
have  a  book  that  is  made  for  use. 

That  book  interests  me — fascinates  me — 
and  yet  I  wish  I  could  join  heartily  in  that 
chorus  of  praise  which  the  kind-hearted  old 
bully  has  enjoyed.     It  is  difficult  to  follow 

61 


52  THROUGH  THE  INIAGTC  DOOR 
his  own  advice  and  to  "clear  one's  mind  of 
cant"  upon  the  subject,  for  when  you  have 
been  accustomed  to  look  at  him  through  the 
sympathetic  glasses  of  Macaulay  or  of  Bos- 
well,  it  is  hard  to  take  them  off,  to  rub  one's 
eyes,  and  to  have  a  good  honest  stare  on  one's 
own  account  at  the  man's  actual  words,  deeds, 
and  limitations.  If  you  try  it  you  are  left 
with  the  oddest  mixture  of  impressions.  How 
could  one  express  it  save  that  this  is  John  Bull 
taken  to  literature — the  exaggerated  John 
Bull  of  the  caricaturists — with  every  quality, 
good  or  evil,  at  its  highest?  Here  are  the 
rough  crust  over  a  kindly  heart,  the  explosive 
temper,  the  arrogance,  the  insular  narrowness, 
the  want  of  sympathy  and  insight,  the  rude- 
ness of  perception,  the  positiveness,  the  over- 
bearing bluster,  the  strong  deep-seated  reli- 
gious principle,  and  every  other  characteristic 
of  the  cruder,  rougher  John  Bull  who  was  the 
great-grandfather  of  the  present  good-natured 
Johnnie. 

If  Boswell  had  not  lived  I  wonder  how  much 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR    53 

we  should  hear  now  of  his  huge  friend  ?  With 
Scotch  persistence  he  has  succeeded  in  inocu- 
lating the  whole  world  with  his  hero  worship. 
It  was  most  natural  that  he  should  himself  ad- 
mire him.  The  relations  between  the  two  men 
were  delightful  and  reflect  all  credit  upon  each. 
But  they  are  not  a  safe  basis  from  which  any 
third  person  could  argue.  When  they  met, 
Boswell  was  in  his  twenty-third  and  Johnson 
in  his  fifty-fourth  year.  The  one  was  a  keen 
young  Scot  with  a  mind  which  was  reverent 
and  imj^ressionable.  The  other  was  a  figure 
from  a  past  generation  with  his  fame  already 
made.  From  the  moment  of  meeting  the  one 
was  bound  to  exercise  an  absolute  ascendency 
over  the  other  which  made  unbiased  criticism 
far  more  difficult  than  it  would  be  between 
ordinary  father  and  son.  Up  to  the  end  this 
was  the  unbroken  relation  between  them. 

It  is  all  very  well  to  pooh-pooh  Boswell  as 
Macaulay  has  done,  but  it  is  not  by  chance 
that  a  man  writes  the  best  biography  in  the 
language.     He  had  some  great  and  rare  liter- 


54  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
aiy  qualities.  One  was  a  clear  and  vivid  style, 
more  flexible  and  Saxon  than  that  of  his  great 
model.  Another  was  a  remarkable  discretion 
which  hardly  once  permitted  a  fault  of  taste 
in  this  whole  enormous  book  where  he  must 
have  had  to  pick  his  steps  with  pitfalls  on  every 
side  of  him.  They  say  that  he  was  a  fool 
and  a  coxcomb  in  private  life.  He  is  never  so 
with  a  pen  in  his  hand.  Of  all  his  numerous 
arguments  with  Johnson,  where  he  ventured 
some  little  squeak  of  remonstrance,  before  the 
roaring  "No,  sir!"  came  to  silence  him,  there 
are  few  in  wliich  his  views  were  not,  as  experi- 
ence proved,  the  wiser.  On  the  question  of 
slavery  he  was  in  the  wrong.  But  I  could 
quote  from  memory  at  least  a  dozen  cases,  in- 
cluding such  vital  subjects  as  the  American 
Revolution,  the  Hanoverian  Dynasty,  Re- 
ligious Toleration,  and  so  on,  where  Boswell's 
views  were  those  which  survived. 

But  where  he  excels  as  a  biographer  is  in 
telling  you  just  those  little  things  that  you 
want  to  know.     How  often  you  read  the  life 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  55 
of  a  man  and  are  left  without  the  remotest 
idea  of  his  personality.  It  is  not  so  here. 
The  man  lives  again.  There  is  a  short  descrip- 
tion of  Johnson's  person — it  is  not  in  the  Life, 
but  in  the  Tour  to  the  Hebrides,  the  very  next 
book  upon  the  shelf,  which  is  typical  of  his 
vivid  portraiture.  ]May  I  take  it  down,  and 
read  you  a  paragraph  of  it? — 

"His  person  was  large,  robust,  I  may  say 
approaching  to  the  gigantic,  and  grown  un- 
wieldy from  corpulency.  His  countenance 
was  naturally  of  the  cast  of  an  ancient  statue, 
but  somewhat  disfigured  bj?-  the  scars  of  King's 
evil.  He  was  now  in  his  sixty-fourth  year 
and  was  become  a  little  dull  of  hearing.  His 
sight  had  always  been  somewhat  weak,  yet  so 
much  does  mind  govern  and  even  supply  the 
deficiencies  of  organs  that  his  perceptions  were 
uncommonly  quick  and  accurate.  His  head, 
and  sometimes  also  his  body,  shook  with  a  kind 
of  motion  like  the  effect  of  palsy.  He  ap- 
peared to  be  frequently  disturbed  by  cramps 
or  convulsive  contractions  of  the  nature  of  that 


56         THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 

distemper  called  St.  Vitus'  dance.  He  wore 
a  full  suit  of  x)lain  brown  clothes,  with  twisted 
hair  buttons  of  the  same  color,  a  large  bushy 
grayish  wig,  a  plain  shirt,  black  worsted  stock- 
ings and  silver  buckles.  Upon  this  tour  when 
journeying  he  wore  boots  and  a  very  wide 
brown  cloth  great-coat  with  pockets  which 
might  almost  have  held  the  two  volumes  of  his 
folio  dictionary,  and  he  carried  in  his  hand  a 
large  English  oak  stick.'*  You  must  admit 
that  if  one  cannot  reconstruct  the  great  Samuel 
after  that  it  is  not  Mr.  Boswell's  fault — and 
it  is  but  one  of  a  dozen  equally  vivid  glimpses 
which  he  gives  us  of  his  hero.  It  is  just  these 
pen-pictures  of  his  of  the  big,  uncouth  man, 
with  his  grunts  and  his  groans,  his  Gargan- 
tuan appetite,  his  twenty  cups  of  tea,  and  his 
tricks  with  the  orange-peel  and  the  lamp-posts, 
which  fascinate  the  reader,  and  have  given 
Johnson  a  far  broader  literary  vogue  than  his 
writings  could  have  done. 

For,  after  all,  which  of  those  writings  can 
be  said  to  have  any  life  to-day?     Not  "Rasse- 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  57 

las,"  surely — that  stilted  romance.  "The 
Lives  of  the  Poets"  are  but  a  succession  of 
prefaces,  and  the  "Ramblers"  of  ephemeral 
essays.  There  is  the  monstrous  drudgery  of 
the  Dictionary,  a  huge  piece  of  spadework,  a 
monument  to  industry,  but  inconceivable  to 
genius.  "London"  has  a  few  vigorous  lines, 
and  the  "Journey  to  the  Hebrides"  some  spir- 
ited pages.  This,  with  a  number  of  political 
and  other  pamphlets,  was  the  main  output  of 
his  lifetime.  Surely  it  must  be  admitted  that 
it  is  not  enough  to  justify  his  predominant 
place  in  English  literature,  and  that  we  must 
turn  to  his  humble,  much-ridiculed  biographer 
for  the  real  explanation. 

And  then  there  was  his  talk.  What  was 
it  which  gave  it  such  distinction?  His  clear- 
cut  positiveness  upon  every  subject.  But  this 
is  a  sign  of  a  narrow  finality — impossible  to 
the  man  of  sympathy  and  of  imagination,  who 
sees  the  other  side  of  every  question  and  un- 
derstands what  a  little  island  the  greatest 
human  knowledge  must  be  in  the  ocean  of  in- 


58  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 

finite  possibilities  whieh  surround  us.  Look 
at  the  results.  Did  ever  any  single  man,  the 
very  dullest  of  the  race,  stand  convicted  of  so 
many  incredible  blunders?  It  recalls  the  re- 
mark of  Bagehot,  that  if  at  any  time  the  views 
of  the  most  learned  could  be  stamped  upon  the 
whole  human  race  the  result  would  be  to  propa- 
gate the  most  absurd  errors.  He  was  asked 
what  became  of  swallows  in  the  winter.  Roll- 
ing and  wheezing,  the  oracle  answered: 
"Swallows,"  said  he,  "certainly  sleep  all  the 
winter.  A  number  of  them  conglobulate  to- 
gether by  flying  round  and  round,  and  then  all 
in  a  heap  throw  themselves  under  water  and 
lie  in  the  bed  of  a  river."  Boswell  gravely 
dockets  the  information.  However,  if  I  re- 
member right,  even  so  sound  a  naturalist  as 
White  of  Selborne  had  his  doubts  about  the 
swallows.  More  wonderful  are  Johnson's 
mis  judgments  of  his  fellow-authors.  There, 
if  anywhere,  one  would  have  expected  to  find 
a  sense  of  proportion.  Yet  his  conclusions 
would   seem  monstrous   to   a   modern   taste. 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  59 

"Shakespeare,"  he  said,  "never  wrote  six  con- 
secutive good  Hnes."  He  would  only  admit 
two  good  verses  in  Gray's  exquisite  "  Elegy 
Written  in  a  Country  Churchyard,"  where  it 
would  take  a  very  acid  critic  to  find  two  bad 
ones.  "Tristram  Shandy"  would  not  live. 
"Plamlet"  was  gabble.  Swift's  "Gulliver's 
Travels"  was  poor  stuff,  and  he  never  wrote 
anything  good  except  "A  Tale  of  a  Tub." 
Voltaire  was  illiterate.  Rousseau  was  a  scoun- 
drel. Deists,  like  Hume,  Priestley,  or  Gib- 
bon, could  not  be  honest  men. 

And  his  political  opinions!  They  sound 
now  like  a  caricature.  I  suppose  even  in  those 
daj^s  they  were  reactionary.  "A  poor  man 
has  no  honor."  "Charles  the  Second  was  a 
good  King."  "Governments  should  turn  out 
of  the  Civil  Service  all  who  were  on  the  other 
side."  "Judges  in  India  should  be  encour- 
aged to  trade."  "No  country  is  the  richer  on 
account  of  trade."  (I  wonder  if  Adam  Smith 
was  in  the  company  when  this  proposition  was 
laid  down ! )     "A  landed  proprietor  should  turn 


60  THROUGH  THE  :\IAGIC  DOOR 

out  those  tenants  who  did  not  vote  as  he 
wished."  "It  is  not  good  for  a  laborer  to  have 
his  wages  raised."  "When  the  balance  of 
trade  is  against  a  country,  the  margin  must  be 
paid  in  current  coin."  Those  were  a  few  of 
his  convictions. 

And  then  his  prejudices!  Most  of  us  have 
some  unreasoning  aversion.  In  our  more  gen- 
erous moments  we  are  not  proud  of  it.  But 
consider  those  of  Johnson!  When  they  were 
all  eliminated  there  was  not  so  very  much  left. 
He  hated  Whigs.  He  disliked  Scotsmen. 
He  detested  Nonconformists  (a  young  lady 
who  joined  them  was  "an  odious  wench"). 
He  loathed  Americans.  So  he  walked  his  nar- 
row line,  belching  fire  and  fury  at  everything 
to  the  right  or  the  left  of  it.  Macaulay's 
posthumous  admiration  is  all  very  well,  but  had 
they  met  in  life  JNIacaulay  would  have  con- 
trived to  unite  under  one  hat  nearly  everything 
that  Johnson  abominated. 

It  cannot  be  said  that  these  prejudices  were 
founded  on  any  strong  principles  or  that  they 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR         61 

could  not  be  altered  where  his  own  personal  in- 
terests demanded  it.  This  is  one  of  the  weak 
points  of  his  record.  In  his  dictionary  he 
abused  pensions  and  pensioners  as  a  means  by 
which  the  State  imposed  slavery  upon  hire- 
lings. When  he  wrote  the  unfortunate  defini- 
tion a  pension  must  have  seemed  a  most  im- 
probable contingency,  but  when  George  III., 
either  through  policy  or  charity,  offered  him 
one  a  little  later,  he  made  no  hesitation  in 
accepting  it.  One  would  have  liked  to  feel 
that  the  violent  expression  of  his  convictions 
represented  a  real  intensity  of  feeling,  but  the 
facts  in  this  instance  seem  against  it. 

He  was  a  great  talker — but  his  talk  was 
more  properly  a  monologue.  It  was  a  dis- 
cursive essay,  with  perhaps  a  few  marginal 
notes  from  his  subdued  audience.  How  could 
one  talk  on  equal  terms  with  a  man  who  could 
not  brook  contradiction  or  even  argument  upon 
the  most  vital  questions  in  life  ?  Would  Gold- 
smith defend  his  literary  views,  or  Burke  his 
Whiggism,    or    Gibbon    his    Deism?     There 


62  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 

was  no  common  ground  of  philosophic  tolera- 
tion on  which  one  could  stand.  If  he  could 
not  argue  he  would  be  rude,  or,  as  Goldsmith 
put  it:  "If  his  pistol  missed  fire,  he  would 
knock  you  down  with  the  butt  end."  In  the 
face  of  that  "rhinoceros  laugh"  there  was  an 
end  of  gentle  argument.  Napoleon  said  that 
all  the  other  kings  would  say  "Ouf !"  when 
they  heard  he  was  dead,  and  so  I  cannot  help 
thinking  that  the  older  men  of  Johnson's  circle 
must  have  given  a  sigh  of  relief  when  at  last 
they  could  speak  freely  on  that  which  was  near 
their  hearts,  without  the  danger  of  a  scene 
where  "Why,  no,  sir!"  was  very  likely  to  ripen 
into  "Let  us  have  no  more  on't!"  Certainly 
one  would  like  to  get  behind  Bos  well's  account, 
and  to  hear  a  chat  between  such  men  as  Burke 
and  Reynolds,  as  to  the  difference  in  the  free- 
dom and  atmosphere  of  the  Club  on  an  even- 
ing when  the  formidable  Doctor  was  not  there, 
as  compared  to  one  when  he  was. 

No  smallest  estimate  of  his  character  is  fair 
which  does  not  make  due  allowance  for  the 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  63 

terrible  experiences  of  his  youth  and  early 
middle  age.  His  spirit  was  as  scarred  as  his 
face.  He  was  fifty-three  when  the  pension 
was  given  liim,  and  up  to  then  his  existence 
had  been  spent  in  one  constant  struggle  for 
the  first  necessities  of  life,  for  the  daily  meal 
and  the  nightly  bed.  He  had  seen  his  com- 
rades of  letters  die  of  actual  privation.  From 
childliood  he  had  known  no  happiness.  The 
half  blind  gawky  youth,  with  dirty  linen  and 
twitching  limbs,  had  always,  whether  in  the 
streets  of  Lichfield,  the  quadrangle  of  Pem- 
broke, or  the  coffee-houses  of  London,  been  an 
object  of  mingled  pity  and  amusement. 
With  a  proud  and  sensitive  soul,  every  day  of 
his  life  must  have  brought  some  bitter  humilia- 
tion. Such  an  experience  must  either  break 
a  man's  spirit  or  embitter  it,  and  here,  no  doubt, 
was  the  secret  of  that  roughness,  that  careless- 
ness for  the  sensibilities  of  others,  which  caused 
Boswell's  father  to  christen  him  "Ursa  Major." 
If  his  nature  was  in  any  way  warped,  it  must 
be  admitted  that  terrific  forces  had  gone  to  the 


64         THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
rending  of  it.     His  good  was  innate,  his  evil 
the  result  of  a  dreadful  experience. 

And  he  had  some  great  qualities.  JNIemory 
was  the  chief  of  them.  He  had  read  omniv- 
orously,  and  all  that  he  had  read  he  remem- 
bered, not  merely  in  the  vague,  general  way 
in  which  we  remember  what  we  read,  but  with 
every  particular  of  place  and  date.  If  it  were 
poetry,  he  could  quote  it  by  the  page,  Latin 
or  English.  Such  a  memory  has  its  enormous 
advantage,  but  it  carries  with  it  its  corre- 
sponding defect.  With  the  mind  so  crammed 
with  other  people's  goods,  how  can  you  have 
room  for  any  fresh  manufactures  of  your 
own?  A  great  memorj^  is,  I  think,  often  fatal 
to  originality,  in  spite  of  Scott  and  some  other 
exceptions.  The  slate  must  be  clear  before 
you  j)ut  your  own  writing  upon  it.  When 
did  Johnson  ever  discover  an  original  thought, 
when  did  he  ever  reach  forward  into  the  fu- 
ture, or  throw  any  fresh  light  upon  those 
enigmas  with  which  mankind  is  faced?  Over- 
loaded with  the  past,  he  had  space  for  nothing 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  65 

else.  INIodern  developments  of  every  sort  cast 
no  first  herald  rays  upon  his  mind.  He  jour- 
neyed in  France  a  few  years  before  the  great- 
est cataclysm  that  the  world  has  ever  known, 
and  his  mind,  arrested  by  much  that  was  trivial, 
never  once  responded  to  the  storm-signals 
which  must  surely  have  been  visible  around 
him.  We  read  that  an  amiable  Monsieur 
Sansterre  showed  him  over  his  brewery  and 
supplied  him  with  statistics  as  to  his  outj^ut  of 
beer.  It  was  the  same  foul-mouthed  Sansterre 
who  struck  up  the  drums  to  drown  Louis'  voice 
at  the  scaffold.  The  association  shows  how 
near  the  unconscious  sage  was  to  the  edge  of 
that  precij)ice  and  how  little  his  learning 
availed  him  in  discerning  it. 

He  would  have  been  a  great  lawyer  or 
divine.  Nothing,  one  would  think,  could  have 
kept  him  from  Canterbury  or  from  the  Wool- 
sack. In  either  case  his  memory,  his  learning, 
his  dignity,  and  his  inherent  sense  of  piety  and 
justice,  would  have  sent  him  straight  to  the 
top.     His  brain,  working  within  its  own  limi- 


66  TUnOVGH  THE  MAGTC  DOOR 
tations,  was  remarkable.  Tliere  is  no  more 
wonderful  proof  of  this  than  his  opinions  on 
questions  of  Scotch  law,  as  given  to  Boswell 
and  as  used  by  the  latter  before  the  Scotch 
judges.  That  an  outsider  with  no  special 
training  should  at  short  notice  write  such 
weighty  opinions,  crammed  with  argument  and 
reason,  is,  I  think,  as  remarkable  a  tour  de 
force  as  literature  can  show. 

Above  all,  he  really  was  a  very  kind-hearted 
man,  and  that  must  count  for  much.  His 
was  a  large  charity,  and  it  came  from  a  small 
purse.  The  rooms  of  his  house  became  a  sort 
of  harbor  of  refuge  in  which  several  strange 
battered  hulks  found  their  last  moorings. 
There  were  the  blind  Mr.  Levett,  and  the  acid- 
ulous Mrs.  Williams,  and  the  colorless  Mrs.  De 
JNIoulins,  all  old  and  ailing — a  trying  group 
amid  which  to  spend  one's  days.  His  guinea 
was  always  ready  for  the  j)oor  acquaintance, 
and  no  poet  was  so  humble  that  he  might  not 
preface  his  book  with  a  dedication  whose  pon- 
derous and  sonorous  sentences  bore  the  hall- 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  67 

mark  of  their  maker.  It  is  the  rough,  kindly 
man,  the  man  who  bore  the  poor  street-walker 
home  upon  his  shoulders,  who  makes  one  for- 
get, or  at  least  forgive,  the  dogmatic  pedantic 
Doctor  of  the  Club. 

There  is  always  to  me  something  of  interest 
in  the  view  which  a  great  man  takes  of  old 
age  and  death.  It  is  the  practical  test  of  how 
far  the  philosophy  of  his  life  has  been  a  sound 
one.  Hume  saw  death  afar,  and  met  it  with 
unostentatious  calm.  Johnson's  mind  flinched 
from  that  dread  opponent.  His  letters  and  his 
talk  during  his  latter  years  are  one  long  cry 
of  fear.  It  was  not  cowardice,  for  physically 
he  was  one  of  the  most  stout-hearted  men  that 
ever  lived.  There  were  no  limits  to  his 
courage.  It  was  spiritual  diffidence,  coupled 
with  an  actual  belief  in  the  possibilities  of  the 
other  world,  which  a  more  humane  and  hberal 
theology  has  done  something  to  soften.  How 
strange  to  see  him  cling  so  desperately  to  that 
crazy  body,  with  its  gout,  its  asthma,  its  St. 
Vitus'  dance,  and  its  six  gallons  of  di'opsy! 


68  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
What  could  be  the  attraction  of  an  existence 
where  eight  hours  of  every  day  were  spent 
groaning  in  a  chair,  and  sixteen  wheezing  in 
a  bed?  "I  would  give  one  of  these  legs,"  said 
he,  "for  another  year  of  life."  None  the  less, 
when  the  hour  did  at  last  strike,  no  man  could 
have  borne  himself  with  more  simple  dignity 
and  courage.  Say  what  you  ^vill  of  him,  and 
resent  him  how  you  may,  you  can  never  open 
those  four  gray  volumes  without  getting  some 
mental  stimulus,  some  desire  for  wider  read- 
ing, some  insight  into  human  learning  or  char- 
acter, which  should  leave  you  a  better  and  a 
wiser  man. 


IV 

Next  to  my  Jolmsoniana  are  my  Gibbons — ■ 
two  editions,  if  you  please,  for  mj^  old  com- 
plete one  being  somewhat  crabbed  in  the  print 
I  could  not  resist  getting  a  set  of  Bury's  new 
six-volume  presentment  of  the  History.  In 
reading  that  book  you  don't  want  to  be  handi- 
capped in  any  way.  You  want  fair  type,  clear 
paper,  and  a  light  volume.  You  are  not  to 
read  it  lightly,  but  with  some  earnestness  of 
purpose  and  keenness  for  knowledge,  wuth  a 
classical  atlas  at  your  elbow  and  a  note-book 
hard  by,  taking  easy  stages  and  harking  back 
every  now  and  then  to  keep  your  grip  of  the 
past  and  to  link  it  up  with  what  follows. 
There  are  no  thrills  in  it.  You  won't  be  kept 
out  of  your  bed  at  night,  nor  will  you  forget 
your  appointments  during  the  day,  but  you 
will  feel  a  certain  sedate  pleasure  in  the  doing 

69 


70  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 

of  it,  and  when  it  is  done  you  will  have  gained 
something  which  you  can  never  lose — some- 
thing solid,  something  definite,  something  that 
will  make  you  broader  and  deeper  than  before. 
Were  I  condemned  to  spend  a  year  uj)on  a 
desert  island  and  allowed  only  one  book  for  my 
companion,  it  is  certainly  that  which  I  should 
choose.  For  consider  how  enormous  is  its 
scope,  and  what  food  for  thought  is  contained 
within  those  volumes.  It  covers  a  thousand 
years  of  the  world's  history,  it  is  full  and  good 
and  accurate,  its  standpoint  is  broadly  philo- 
sophic, its  style  dignified.  With  our  more 
elastic  methods  we  may  consider  his  manner 
pompous,  but  he  lived  in  an  age  w^hen  John- 
son's turgid  periods  had  corrupted  our  litera- 
ture. For  my  o^vn  part  I  do  not  dislike  Gib- 
bon's pomposity.  A  paragraph  should  be 
measured  and  sonorous  if  it  ventures  to  de- 
scribe the  advance  of  a  Roman  legion,  or  the 
debate  of  a  Greek  Senate.  You  are  wafted 
upwards,  with  this  lucid  and  just  spirit  by  your 
side    upholding    and    instructing    you.     Be- 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  71 
neath  you  are  warring  nations,  the  clash  of 
races,  the  rise  and  fall  of  dynasties,  the  con- 
flict of  creeds.  Serene  you  float  above  them 
all,  and  ever  as  the  panorama  flows  past,  the 
weighty  measured  unemotional  voice  whis- 
pers the  true  meaning  of  the  scene  into  your 
ear. 

It  is  a  most  mighty  story  that  is  told.  You 
begin  with  a  description  of  the  state  of  the 
Roman  Empire  when  the  early  C^sars  were  on 
the  throne,  and  when  it  was  undisputed  mis- 
tress of  the  world.  You  pass  down  the  line 
of  the  Emperors  with  their  strange  alterna- 
tions of  greatness  and  profligacy,  descending 
occasionally  to  criminal  lunacy.  When  the 
Empire  went  rotten  it  began  at  the  top,  and  it 
took  centuries  to  corrupt  the  man  behind  the 
spear.  iV^either  did  a  religion  of  peace  affect 
him  much,  for,  in  spite  of  the  adoption  of 
Christianity,  Roman  history  was  still  written 
in  blood.  The  new  creed  had  only  added  a 
fresh  cause  of  quarrel  and  violence  to  the  many 
which  already  existed,  and  the  wars  of  angry 


12         THROUGH  TPIE  MAGIC  DOOR 
nations  were  mild  compared  to  those  of  excited 
sectaries. 

Then  came  the  mighty  rushing  wind  from 
without,  blowing  from  the  waste  places  of  the 
world,  destroying,  confounding,  whirling 
madly  through  the  old  order,  leaving  broken 
chaos  behind  it,  but  finally  cleansing  and  puri- 
fying that  which  was  stale  and  corrupt.  A 
storm-center  somewhere  in  the  north  of  China 
did  suddenly  what  it  may  very  well  do  again. 
The  human  volcano  blew  its  top  off,  and 
Europe  was  covered  by  the  destructive  debris. 
The  absurd  point  is  that  it  was  not  the  con- 
querors who  overran  the  Koman  Empire,  but 
it  was  the  terrified  fugitives  who,  like  a  drove 
of  stampeded  cattle,  blundered  over  every- 
thing which  barred  their  way.  It  was  a  wild, 
dramatic  time — the  time  of  the  formation  of 
the  modern  races  of  Europe.  The  nations 
came  whirling  in  out  of  the  north  and  east  like 
dust-storms,  and  amid  the  seeming  chaos  each 
was  blended  with  its  neighbor  so  as  to  toughen 
the  fiber  of  the  whole.     The  fickle  Gaul  got 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  73 

his  steadying  from  the  Franks,  the  steady 
Saxon  got  his  touch  of  refinement  from  the 
Norman,  the  Itahan  got  a  fresh  lease  of  hfe 
from  the  Lombard  and  the  Ostrogoth,  the  cor- 
rupt Greek  made  way  for  the  manly  and 
earnest  Mahommedan.  Everywhere  one 
seems  to  see  a  great  hand  blending  the  seeds. 
And  so  one  can  now,  save  onty  that  emigra- 
tion has  taken  the  place  of  war.  It  does  not, 
for  example,  take  much  prophetic  power  to 
say  that  something  very  great  is  being  built 
up  on  the  other  side  of  the  Atlantic.  When 
on  an  Anglo- Celtic  basis  you  see  the  Italian, 
the  Hun,  and  the  Scandinavian  being  added, 
you  feel  that  there  is  no  human  quality  which 
may  not  be  thereby  evolved. 

But  to  revert  to  Gibbon:  the  next  stage 
is  the  flight  of  Empire  from  Rome  to  Byzan- 
tium, even  as  the  Anglo-Celtic  power  might 
find  its  center  some  day  not  in  London  but  in 
Chicago  or  Toronto.  There  is  the  whole 
strange  story  of  the  tidal  wave  of  Mahom- 
medanism    from   the   south,    submerging    all 


74  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
North  Africa,  spreading  right  and  left  to  In- 
dia on  the  one  side  and  to  Spain  on  the  other, 
finally  washing  right  over  the  walls  of  Byzan- 
tium until  it,  the  bulwark  of  Christianity,  be- 
came what  it  is  now,  the  advanced  European 
fortress  of  the  Moslem.  Such  is  the  tremen- 
duous  narrative  covering  half  the  world's 
known  history,  which  can  all  be  acquired  and 
made  part  of  yourself  by  the  aid  of  that 
humble  atlas,  pencil,  and  note-book  already 
recommended. 

When  all  is  so  interesting  it  is  hard  to  pick 
examples,  but  to  me  there  has  always  seemed 
to  be  something  peculiarly  impressive  in  the 
first  entrance  of  a  new  race  on  to  the  stage  of 
history.  It  has  something  of  the  glamour 
which  hangs  round  the  early  youth  of  a  great 
man.  You  remember  how  the  Russians  made 
their  debut — came  down  the  great  rivers  and 
appeared  at  the  Bosphorus  in  two  hundred 
canoes,  from  which  they  endeavored  to  board 
the  Imperial  galleys.  Singular  that  a  thou- 
sand years  have  passed  and  that  the  ambition 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  75 

of  the  Russians  is  still  to  carry  out  the  task 
at  which  their  skin-clad  ancestors  failed.  Or 
the  Turks  again;  you  may  recall  the  charac- 
teristic ferocit}^  with  which  they  opened  their 
career.  A  handful  of  them  were  on  some  mis- 
sion to  the  Emi)eror.  The  town  was  besieged 
from  the  landward  side  by  the  barbarians,  and 
the  Asiatics  obtained  leave  to  take  part  in  a 
skirmish.  The  first  Turk  galloped  out,  shot 
a  barbarian  with  his  arrow,  and  then,  lying 
down  beside  him,  proceeded  to  suck  his  blood, 
which  so  horrified  the  man's  comrades  that  they 
could  not  be  brought  to  face  such  uncanny  ad- 
versaries. So,  from  opposite  sides,  those  two 
great  races  arrived  at  the  city  which  was  to  be 
the  stronghold  of  the  one  and  the  ambition  of 
the  other  for  so  many  centuries. 

And  then,  even  more  interesting  than  the 
rsiceCi  which  arrive  are  those  that  disappear. 
There  is  something  there  which  appeals  most 
powerfully  to  the  imagination.  Take,  for  ex- 
ample, the  fate  of  those  Vandals  who  con- 
quered the  north  of  Africa.     They  were  a 


76  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 

German  tribe,  blue-eyed  and  flaxen-haired, 
from  somewhere  in  the  Elbe  country.  Sud- 
denly they,  too,  were  seized  with  the  strange 
wandering  madness  which  was  epidemic  at  the 
time.  Away  they  went  on  the  line  of  least  re- 
sistance, which  is  always  from  north  to  south 
and  from  east  to  west.  SouthwTst  was  the 
course  of  the  Vandals — a  course  which  must 
have  been  continued  through  pure  love  of  ad- 
venture, since  in  the  thousands  of  miles  which 
they  traversed  there  were  many  fair  resting- 
places,  if  that  were  only  their  quest. 

They  crossed  the  south  of  France,  conquered 
Spain,  and,  finally,  the  more  adventurous 
passed  over  into  Africa,  where  they  occupied 
the  old  Roman  province.  For  two  or  three 
generations  they  held  it,  much  as  the  English 
hold  India,  and  their  numbers  were  at  the  least 
some  hundreds  of  thousands.  Presently  the 
Roman  Empire  gave  one  of  those  flickers 
which  showed  that  there  was  still  some  fire 
among  the  ashes.  Belisarius  landed  in  Africa 
and  reconquered  the  province.     The  Vandals 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  77 

were  cut  off  from  the  sea  and  fled  inland. 
Whither  did  they  carry  those  blue  eyes  and  that 
flaxen  hair?  Were  they  exterminated  by  the 
negroes,  or  did  they  amalgamate  with  them? 
Travelers  have  brought  back  stories  from  the 
Mountains  of  the  Moon  of  a  Negroid  race 
with  light  eyes  and  hair.  Is  it  possible  that 
here  we  have  some  trace  of  the  vanished  Ger- 


mans 


It  recalls  the  parallel  case  of  the  lost  settle- 
ments in  Greenland.  That  also  has  always 
seemed  to  me  to  be  one  of  the  most  romantic 
questions  in  history — the  more  so,  perhaps,  as 
I  have  strained  my  eyes  to  see  across  the  ice- 
floes the  Greenland  coast  at  the  point  (or  near 
it)  where  the  old  "Eyrbyggia"  must  have 
stood.  That  was  the  Scandinavian  city, 
founded  by  colonists  from  Iceland,  which  grew 
to  be  a  considerable  place,  so  much  so  that  they 
sent  to  Denmark  for  a  bishop.  That  would  be 
in  the  fourteenth  century.  The  bishop,  com- 
ing out  to  his  see,  found  that  he  was  unable  to 
reach  it  on  account  of  a  climatic  change  which 


78  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
had  brought  down  the  ice  and  filled  the  strait 
between  Iceland  and  Greenland.  From  that 
day  to  this  no  one  has  been  able  to  say  what 
has  become  of  these  old  Scandinavians,  who 
were  at  the  time,  be  it  remembered,  the  most 
civilized  and  advanced  race  in  Europe.  They 
may  have  been  overwhelmed  by  the  Esqui- 
maux, the  despised  Skroeling — or  they  may 
have  amalgamated  with  them — or  conceivably 
they  might  have  held  their  own.  Very  little 
is  known  yet  of  that  portion  of  the  coast.  It 
would  be  strange  if  some  ISTansen  or  Peary 
were  to  stumble  upon  the  remains  of  the  old 
colony,  and  find  possibly  in  that  antiseptic  at- 
mosphere a  complete  mummy  of  some  bygone 
civilization. 

But  once  more  to  return  to  Gibbon.  What 
a  mind  it  must  have  been  which  first  planned, 
and  then,  with  the  incessant  labor  of  twenty 
years,  carried  out  that  enormous  work !  There 
was  no  classical  author  so  little  known,  no 
Byzantine  historian  so  diffuse,  no  monkish 
chronicle  so  crabbed,  that  they  were  not  assimi- 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  79 

lated  and  worked  into  their  appropriate  place 
in  the  huge  framework.  Great  appHcation, 
great  perseverance,  great  attention  to  detail 
was  needed  in  all  this,  but  the  coral  polyp  has 
all  those  qualities,  and  somehow  in  the  heart  of 
his  own  creation  the  individuality  of  the  man 
himself  becomes  as  insignificant  and  as  much 
overlooked  as  that  of  the  little  creature  that 
builds  the  reef.  A  thousand  know  Gibbon's 
work  for  one  who  cares  anything  for  Gibbon. 
And  on  the  whole  this  is  justified  by  the 
facts.  Some  men  are  greater  than  their  work. 
Their  work  only  represents  one  facet  of  their 
character,  and  there  may  be  a  dozen  others, 
all  remarkable,  and  uniting  to  make  one  com- 
plex and  unique  creature.  It  was  not  so  with 
Gibbon.  He  was  a  cold-blooded  man,  with  a 
brain  which  seemed  to  have  grown  at  the  ex- 
pense of  his  heart.  I  cannot  recall  in  his  life 
one  generous  impulse,  one  ardent  enthusiasm, 
save  for  the  Classics.  His  excellent  judgment 
was  never  clouded  by  the  haze  of  human  emo- 
tion— or,  at  least,  it  was  such  an  emotion  as 


80  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 

was  well  under  the  control  of  his  will.  Could 
anything  be  more  laudable — or  less  lovable? 
He  abandons  his  girl  at  the  order  of  his  father, 
and  sums  it  up  that  he  "sighs  as  a  lover  but 
obeys  as  a  son."  The  father  dies,  and  he  re- 
cords the  fact  with  the  remark  that  "the  tears 
of  a  son  are  seldom  lasting."  The  terrible 
spectacle  of  the  French  Revolution  excited  in 
his  mind  only  a  feeling  of  self-j)ity  because  his 
retreat  in  Switzerland  was  invaded  by  the  un- 
happy refugees,  just  as  a  grumpy  country 
gentleman  in  England  might  complain  that  he 
was  annoyed  by  the  trippers.  There  is  a  touch 
of  dislike  in  all  the  allusions  which  Boswell 
makes  to  Gibbon — often  without  even  men- 
tioning his  name — and  one  cannot  read  the 
great  historian's  life  without  understanding 
why. 

•  I  should  think  that  few  men  have  been  born 
with  the  material  for  self-sufficient  content- 
ment more  completely  within  himself  than 
Edward  Gibbon.  He  had  every  gift  which  a 
great  scholar  should  have,  an  insatiable  thirst 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  81 

for  learning  in  every  form,  immense  industry, 
a  retentive  memory,  and  that  broadly  philo- 
sophic temperament  which  enables  a  man 
to  rise  above  the  partisan  and  to  become  the  im- 
partial critic  of  human  affairs.  It  is  true  that 
at  the  time  he  was  looked  upon  as  bitterly 
prejudiced  in  the  matter  of  religious  thouglit, 
but  his  views  are  familiar  to  modern 
philosophy,  and  would  shock  no  susceptibilities 
in  these  more  liberal  (and  more  virtuous) 
days.  Turn  him  up  in  that  Encyclopedia,  and 
see  what  the  latest  word  is  upon  his  conten- 
tions. "Upon  the  famous  fifteenth  and  six- 
teenth chapters  it  is  not  necessary  to  dwell," 
says  the  biographer,  "because  at  this  time  of 
day  no  Christian  apologist  dreams  of  denying 
the  substantial  truth  of  any  of  the  more  im- 
portant allegations  of  Gibbon.  Christians 
may  complain  of  the  suppression  of  some  cir- 
cumstances which  might  influence  the  general 
result,  and  they  must  remonstrate  against  the 
unfair  construction  of  their  case.  But  they 
no  longer  refuse  to  hear  any  reasonable  evi- 


82  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 

dence  tending  to  show  that  persecution  was 
less  severe  than  had  been  once  beheved,  and 
they  have  slowly  learned  that  they  can  afford  to 
concede  the  validity  of  all  the  secondary  causes 
assigned  by  Gibbon  and  even  of  others  still 
more  discreditable.  The  fact  is,  as  the  his- 
torian has  again  and  again  admitted,  that  his 
account  of  the  secondary  causes  which  contrib- 
uted to  the  progress  and  establishment  of 
Christianity  leaves  the  question  as  to  the  nat- 
ural or  supernatural  origin  of  Christianity 
practically  untouched."  This  is  all  very  well, 
but  in  that  case  how  about  the  century  of  abuse 
which  has  been  showered  upon  the  historian? 
Some  posthumous  apology  would  seem  to  be 
called  for. 

Physically,  Gibbon  was  as  small  as  John- 
son was  large,  but  there  was  a  curious  affinity 
in  their  bodily  ailments.  Johnson,  as  a  youth, 
was  ulcerated  and  tortured  by  the  king's  evil, 
in  spite  of  the  Royal  touch.  Gibbon  gives  us 
a  concise  but  lurid  account  of  his  own  boy- 
hood. 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  83 

"I  was  successively  afflicted  by  lethargies 
and  fevers,  by  opposite  tendencies  to  a  con- 
sumptive and  dropsical  habit,  by  a  contraction 
of  my  nerves,  a  fistula  in  my  eye,  and  the  bite 
of  a  dog,  most  vehemently  suspected  of  mad- 
ness. Every  practitioner  was  called  to  my  aid, 
the  fees  of  the  doctors  were  swelled  by  the  bills 
of  the  apothecaries  and  surgeons.  There  was 
a  time  when  I  swallowed  more  physic  than 
food,  and  my  body  is  still  marked  by  the  in- 
delible scars  of  lancets,  issues,  and  caustics." 

Such  is  his  melancholy  report.  The  fact  is 
that  the  England  of  that  day  seems  to  have 
been  very  full  of  that  hereditary  form  of 
chronic  ill-health  which  we  call  by  the  general 
name  of  struma.  How  far  the  hard-drinking 
habits  in  vogue  for  a  century  or  so  before  had 
anything  to  do  with  it  I  cannot  say,  nor  can  I 
trace  a  connection  between  struma  and  learn- 
ing; but  one  has  only  to  compare  this  account 
of  Gibbon  with  Johnson's  nervous  twitches, 
his  scarred  face  and  his  St.  Vitus'  dance,  to 


84         THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
realize  that  these,  the  two  most  solid  English 
writers  of  their  generation,  were  each  heir  to 
the  same  gruesome  inheritance. 

I  wonder  if  there  is  any  picture  extant  of 
Gibbon  in  the  character  of  subaltern  in  the 
South  Hampshire  Militia?  With  his  small 
frame,  his  huge  head,  his  round,  chubby  face, 
and  the  pretentious  uniform,  he  must  have 
looked  a  most  extraordinary  figure.  Never 
was  there  so  round  a  peg  in  a  square  hole! 
His  father,  a  man  of  a  very  different  type, 
held  a  commission,  and  this  led  to  poor  Gibbon 
becoming  a  soldier  in  spite  of  himself.  War 
had  broken  out,  the  regiment  was  mustered, 
and  the  unfortunate  student,  to  his  own  utter 
dismay,  was  kept  under  arms  until  the  con- 
clusion of  hostilities.  For  three  years  he  was 
divorced  from  his  books,  and  loudly  and  bit- 
terly did  he  resent  it.  The  South  Hampshire 
Militia  never  saw  the  enemy,  which  is  perhaps 
as  well  for  them.  Even  Gibbon  himself  pokes 
fun  at  them;  but  after  three  years  under  can- 
yas  it  is  probable  that  his  men  had  more  cause 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  85 

to  smile  at  their  book-worm  captain  than  he  at 
his  men.  His  hand  closed  much  more  readily 
on  a  pen-handle  than  on  a  sword-hilt.  In  his 
lament,  one  of  the  items  is  that  his  colonel's  ex- 
ample encouraged  the  daily  practice  of  hard, 
and  even  excessive  drinking,  which  gave  him 
the  gout.  "The  loss  of  so  many  busy  and  idle 
hours  were  not  compensated  for  by  any  elegant 
pleasure,"  says  he;  "and  my  temper  was  in- 
sensibly soured  by  the  society  of  rustic  officers, 
who  were  alike  deficient  in  the  knowledge  of 
scholars  and  the  manners  of  gentlemen." 
The  picture  of  Gibbon  flushed  with  wine  at 
the  mess-table,  with  these  hard-drinking 
squires  around  him,  must  certainly  have  been 
a  curious  one.  He  admits,  however,  that  he 
found  consolations  as  well  as  hardships  in  his 
spell  of  soldiering.  It  made  him  an  English- 
man once  more,  it  improved  his  health,  it 
changed  the  current  of  his  thoughts.  It  was 
even  useful  to  him  as  an  historian.  In  a  cele- 
brated and  characteristic  sentence,  he  says, 
"The  discipline  and  evolutions  of  a  modern 


86         THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
battalion  gave  me  a  clearer  notion  of  the  Pha- 
lanx and  the  Legions,  and  the  captain  of  the 
Hampshire  Grenadiers  has  not  been  useless 
to  the  historian  of  the  Roman  Efmpire." 

If  we  don't  know  all  about  Gibbon  it  is  not 
his  fault,  for  he  wrote  no  fewer  than  six  ac- 
counts of  his  own  career,  each  differing  from 
the  other,  and  all  equally  bad.  A  man  must 
have  more  heart  and  soul  than  Gibbon  to  wTite 
a  good  autobiography.  It  is  the  most  difficult 
of  all  human  compositions,  calling  for  a  mix- 
ture of  tact,  discretion,  and  frankness  which 
make  an  almost  impossible  blend.  Gibbon,  in 
spite  of  his  foreign  education,  was  a  very 
typical  Englishman  in  many  ways,  with  the 
reticence,  self-respect,  and  self-consciousness 
of  the  race.  No  British  autobiography  has 
ever  been  frank,  and  consequently  no  British 
autobiography  has  ever  been  good.  Trol- 
lope's,  perhaps,  is  as  good  as  any  that  I  know, 
but  of  all  forms  of  literature  it  is  the  one  least 
adapted  to  the  national  genius.  You  could  not 
imagine  a  British  Rousseau,  still  less  a  British 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  87 

Benvenuto  Cellini.  In  one  way  it  is  to  the 
credit  of  the  race  that  it  should  be  so.  If  we 
do  as  much  evil  as  our  neighbors  we  at  least 
have  grace  enough  to  be  ashamed  of  it  and  to 
suppress  its  publication. 

There  on  the  left  of  Gibbon  is  my  fine  edi- 
tion (Lord  Braybrooke's)  of  Pepys'  Diary. 
That  is,  in  truth,  the  greatest  autobiography 
in  our  language,  and  yet  it  was  not  deliberately 
written  as  such.  When  Mr.  Pepys  jotted 
down  from  day  to  day  every  quaint  or  mean 
thought  which  came  into  his  head  he  would 
have  been  very  much  surprised  had  any  one 
told  him  that  he  was  doing  a  work  quite  unique 
in  our  literature.  Yet  his  involuntary  auto- 
biography, compiled  for  some  obscure  reason 
or  for  private  reference,  but  certainly  never 
meant  for  publication,  is  as  much  the  first  in 
that  line  of  literature  as  Boswell's  book  among 
biographies  or  Gibbon's  among  histories. 

As  a  race  we  are  too  afraid  of  giving  our- 
selves away  ever  to  produce  a  good  autobiog- 
raphy.    We   resent   the    charge    of   national 


88         THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 

hypocrisy,  and  yet  of  all  nations  we  are  the 
least  frank  as  to  our  own  emotions — especially 
on  certain  sides  of  them.  Those  affairs  of  the 
heart,  for  example,  which  are  such  an  index 
to  a  man's  character,  and  so  profoundly  modify 
his  life — what  space  do  they  fill  in  any  man's 
autobiography?  Perhaps  in  Gibbon's  case  the 
omission  matters  little,  for,  save  in  the  instance 
of  his  well-controlled  passion  for  the  future 
Madame  Neckar,  his  heart  was  never  an  or- 
gan which  gave  him  much  trouble.  The  fact 
is  that  when  the  British  author  tells  his  own 
story  he  tries  to  make  himself  respectable,  and 
the  more  respectable  a  man  is  the  less  inter- 
esting does  he  become.  Rousseau  may  prove 
himself  a  maudlin  degenerate.  Cellini  may 
stand  self -convicted  as  an  amorous  ruffian. 
If  they  are  not  respectable  they  are  thoroughly 
human  and  interesting  all  the  same. 

The  wonderful  thing  about  Mr.  Pepys  is 
that  a  man  should  succeed  in  making  himself 
seem  so  insignificant  when  really  he  must  have 
been  a  man  of  considerable  character  and  at- 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  89 

tainments.  Who  would  guess  it  who  read  all 
these  trivial  comments,  these  catalogues  of 
what  he  had  for  dinner,  these  inane  domestic 
confidences — all  the  more  interesting  for  their 
inanity  1  The  effect  left  upon  the  mind  is  of 
some  grotesque  character  in  a  play,  fussy,  self- 
conscious,  blustering  with  women,  timid  with 
men,  dress-proud,  purse-proud,  trinmiing  in 
politics  and  in  religion,  a  garrulous  gossip  im- 
mersed always  in  trifles.  And  yet,  though  this 
was  the  day-by-day  man,  the  year-by-year  man 
was  a  very  different  person,  a  devoted  civil 
servant,  an  eloquent  orator,  an  excellent  writer, 
a  capable  musician,  and  a  ripe  scholar  who 
accumulated  3,000  volumes — a  large  private 
library  in  those  days — and  had  the  public  spirit 
to  leave  them  all  to  his  University.  You  can 
forgive  old  Pepys  a  good  deal  of  his  philander- 
ing when  you  remember  that  he  was  the  only 
official  of  the  Navy  Office  who  stuck  to  his  post 
during  the  worst  days  of  the  Plague.  He  may 
have  been — indeed,  he  assuredly  was — a  cow- 
ard, but  the  coward  who  has  sense  of  duty 


90         THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 

enough  to  overcome  his  cowardice  is  the  most 
truly  brave  of  mankind. 

But  the  one  amazing  thing  which  will  never 
be  explained  about  Pepj^s  is  what  on  earth  in- 
duced him  to  go  to  the  incredible  labor  of  writ- 
ing down  in  shorthand  cipher  not  only  all  the 
trivialities  of  his  life,  but  even  his  own  very 
gross  delinquencies  which  any  other  man  would 
have  been  only  too  glad  to  forget.  The  Diary 
was  kept  for  about  ten  years,  and  was  aban- 
doned because  the  strain  upon  his  eyes  of  the 
crabbed  shorthand  was  helping  to  destroy  his 
sight.  I  suppose  that  he  became  so  familiar 
with  it  that  he  wrote  it  and  read  it  as  easily  as 
he  did  ordinary  script.  But  even  so,  it  was  a 
huge  labor  to  compile  these  books  of  strange 
manuscript.  Was  it  an  effort  to  leave  some 
memorial  of  his  own  existence  to  single  him  out 
from  all  the  countless  sons  of  men?  In  such 
a  case  he  would  assuredly  have  left  directions 
in  somebody's  care  with  a  reference  to  it  in  the 
deed  by  which  he  bequeathed  his  library  to 
Cambridge.     In  that  way  he  could  have  en- 


TPIROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  91 

siired  having  his  Diary  read  at  any  date  he 
chose  to  name  after  his  death.  But  no  allu- 
sion to  it  was  left,  and  if  it  had  not  been  for 
the  ingenuity  and  perseverance  of  a  single 
scholar  the  dusty  volumes  would  still  lie  un- 
read in  some  top  shelf  of  the  Pepysian 
Library.  Publicity,  then,  was  not  his  object. 
What  could  it  have  been?  The  only  alterna- 
tive is  reference  and  self -information.  You 
will  observe  in  his  character  a  curious  vein  of 
method  and  order  by  which  he  loved  to  be  for 
ever  estimating  his  exact  wealth,  cataloguing 
his  books,  or  scheduling  his  possessions.  It  is 
conceivable  that  this  systematic  recording  of 
his  deeds — even  of  his  misdeeds — was  in  some 
sort  analogous,  sprung  from  a  morbid  tidiness 
of  mind.  It  may  be  a  weak  explanation  but 
it  is  difficult  to  advance  another  one. 

One  minor  point  which  must  strike  the 
reader  of  Pepys  is  how  musical  a  nation  the 
English  of  that  day  appear  to  have  been. 
Every  one  seems  to  have  had  command  of 
some    instrument,    many    of    several.     Part- 


92  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 

singing  was  common.  There  is  not  much  of 
Charles  the  Second's  days  which  we  need 
envy,  but  there,  at  least,  they  seem  to  have 
had  the  advantage  of  us.  It  was  real  music, 
too — music  of  dignity  and  tenderness — with 
words  which  were  worthy  of  such  treatment. 
This  cult  may  have  been  the  last  remains  of 
those  medieeval  pre-Reformation  days  when 
the  English  Church  choirs  were,  as  I  have  read 
somewhere,  the  most  famous  in  Europe.  A 
strange  thing  this  for  a  land  which  in  the 
whole  of  last  century  has  produced  no  single 
master  of  the  first  rank! 

What  national  change  is  it  which  has 
driven  music  from  the  land?  Has  life  be- 
come so  serious  that  song  has  passed  out  of 
it?  In  Southern  climes  one  hears  poor  folk 
sing  for  pure  lightness  of  heart.  In  England, 
alas,  the  sound  of  a  poor  man's  voice  raised 
in  song  means  only  too  surely  that  he  is  drunk. 
And  yet  it  is  consoling  to  know  that  the  germ 
of  the  old  powers  is  always  there  ready  to 
sprout  forth  if  they  be  nourished  and  culti- 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  93 

vated.  If  our  cathedral  choirs  were  the  best 
in  the  old  Catholic  days,  it  is  equally  true,  I 
believe,  that  our  orchestral  associations  are 
now  the  best  in  Europe.  So,  at  least,  the  Ger- 
man papers  said  on  the  occasion  of  the  recent 
visit  of  a  north  of  England  choir.  But  one 
cannot  read  Pepys  without  knowing  that  the 
general  musical  habit  is  much  less  cultivated 
now  than  of  old. 


It  is  a  long  jump  from  Samuel  Pepys  to 
George  Borrow — from  one  pole  of  the  human 
character  to  the  other — and  yet  they  are  in 
contact  on  the  shelf  of  my  favorite  authors. 
There  is  something  wonderful,  I  think,  about 
the  land  of  Cornwall.  That  long  peninsula 
extending  out  into  the  ocean  has  caught  all 
sorts  of  strange  floating  things,  and  has  held 
them  there  in  isolation  until  they  have  woven 
themselves  into  the  texture  of  the  Cornish 
race.  What  is  this  strange  strain  which  lurks 
down  yonder  and  every  now  and  then  throws 
up  a  great  man  with  singular  un-English 
ways  and  features  for  all  the  world  to  marvel 
at?  It  is  not  Celtic,  nor  is  it  the  dark  old 
Iberian.  Further  and  deeper  lie  the  springs. 
Is  it  not  Semitic,  Phoenician,  the  roving  men 
of  Tyre,  with  noble  Southern  faces  and  Ori- 

94 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  95 
ental  imaginations,  who  have  in  far-off  days 
forgotten  their  bkie  Mediterranean  and  set- 
tled on  the  granite  shores  of  the  Northern 
Sea? 

Whence  came  the  wonderful  face  and  great 
personality  of  Henry  Irving?  How  strong, 
how  beautiful,  how  un-Saxon  it  was!  I  only 
know  that  his  mother  was  a  Cornish  woman. 
Whence  came  the  intense  glowing  imagina- 
tion of  the  Brontes — so  unlike  the  Miss- Aus- 
ten-like calm  of  their  predecessors?  Again,  I 
only  know  that  their  mother  was  a  Cornish 
woman.  Whence  came  this  huge  elfin  crea- 
ture, George  Borrow,  with  his  eagle  head 
perched  on  his  rocklike  shoulders,  brown- 
faced,  white-headed,  a  king  among  men? 
Where  did  he  get  that  remarkable  face,  those 
strange  mental  gifts,  which  place  him  by  him- 
self in  literature?  Once  more,  his  father 
was  a  Cornishman.  Yes,  there  is  something 
strange,  and  weird,  and  great,  lurking  down 
yonder  in  the  great  peninsula  which  juts  into 
the    western    sea.     Borrow    may,    if    he    so 


96  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
pleases,  call  himself  an  East  Anglian — "an 
English  Englishman,"  as  he  loved  to  term  it 
— but  is  it  a  coincidence  that  the  one  East 
Anglian  Lorn  of  Cornish  blood  was  the  one 
who  showed  these  strange  quahties?  The 
birth  was  accidental.  The  qualities  throw 
back  to  the  twilight  of  the  world. 

There  are  some  authors  from  whom  I  shrink 
because  they  are  so  voluminous  that  I  feel  that, 
do  what  I  may,  I  can  never  hope  to  be  well 
read  in  their  works.  Therefore,  and  very 
weakly,  I  avoid  them  altogether.  There  is 
Balzac,  for  example,  with  his  hundred  odd  vol- 
umes. I  am  told  that  some  of  them  are  mas- 
terpieces and  the  rest  pot-boilers,  but  that  no 
one  is  agreed  which  is  which.  Such  an  au- 
thor makes  an  undue  claim  upon  the  little 
span  of  mortal  years.  Because  he  asks  too 
much  one  is  inclined  to  give  him  nothing  at 
all.  Dumas,  too!  I  stand  on  the  edge  of 
him,  and  look  at  that  huge  crop,  and  content 
myself  with  a  sample  here  and  there.  But 
no  one  could  raise  this  objection  to  Borrow. 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  97 

A  month's  reading — even  for  a  leisurely  reader 
— will  master  all  that  he  has  written.  There 
are  "Lavengro,"  "The  Bible  in  Spain," 
"Romany  Rye,"  and,  finally,  if  you  wish  to 
go  further,  "Wild  Wales."  Only  four  books 
— not  much  to  found  a  great  reputation  upon 
— but,  then,  there  are  no  other  four  books 
quite  like  them  in  the  language. 

He  was  a  very  strange  man,  bigoted,  preju- 
diced, obstinate,  inclined  to  be  sulky,  as  way- 
ward as  a  man  could  be.  So  far  his  catalogue 
of  qualities  does  not  seem  to  pick  him  as  a 
winner.  But  he  had  one  great  and  rare  gift. 
He  preserved  through  all  his  days  a  sense  of 
the  great  wonder  and  mystery  of  life — ^the 
child  sense  which  is  so  quickly  dulled.  Not 
only  did  he  retain  it  himself,  but  he  was  word- 
master  enough  to  make  other  people  hark  back 
to  it  also.  As  he  writes  you  cannot  help  see- 
ing through  his  eyes,  and  nothing  which  his 
eyes  saw  or  his  ear  heard  was  ever  dull  or  com- 
monplace. It  was  all  strange,  mystic,  with 
some  deeper  meaning  struggling  always  to  the 


98  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 

light.  If  he  chronicled  his  conversation  with 
a  washerwoman  there  was  something  arresting 
in  the  words  he  said,  something  singular  in  her 
reply.  If  he  met  a  man  in  a  puhlic-house  one 
felt,  after  reading  his  account,  that  one 
would  wish  to  know  more  of  that  man.  If 
he  approached  a  town  he  saw  and  made  you 
see — not  a  collection  of  commonplace  houses 
or  frowsy  streets,  but  something  very  strange 
and  wonderful,  the  winding  river,  the  noble 
bridge,  the  old  castle,  the  shadows  of  the 
dead.  Every  human  being,  every  object,  was 
not  so  much  a  thing  in  itself,  as  a  symbol  and 
reminder  of  the  past.  He  looked  through  a 
man  at  that  which  the  man  represented. 
Was  his  name  Welsh?  Then  in  an  instant 
the  individual  is  forgotten  and  he  is  off, 
dragging  you  in  his  train,  to  ancient  Britons, 
intrusive  Saxons,  unheard-of  bards,  Owen 
Glendower,  mountain  raiders  and  a  thousand 
fascinating  things.  Or  is  it  a  Danish  name? 
He  leaves  the  individual  in  all  his  modern 
commonplace  while  he  flies  off  to  huge  skulls 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  99 

at  Hythe  (in  parenthesis  I  may  remark  that 
I  have  examined  the  said  skulls  with  some 
care,  and  they  seemed  to  me  to  be  rather  below 
the  human  average),  to  Vikings,  Berserkers, 
Varangians,  Harald  Haardraada,  and  the  in- 
nate wickedness  of  the  Pope.  To  Borrow  all 
roads  lead  to  Rome. 

But,  my  word,  what  English  the  fellow 
could  write !  What  an  organ-roll  he  could  get 
into  his  sentences!  How  nervous  and  vital 
and  vivid  it  all  is! 

There  is  music  in  every  line  of  it  if  you 
have  been  blessed  with  an  ear  for  the  music 
of  prose.  Take  the  chapter  in  "Lavengro" 
of  how  the  screaming  horror  came  upon  his 
spirit  when  he  was  encamped  in  the  Dingle. 
The  man  who  wrote  that  has  caught  the  true 
mantle  of  Bunyan  and  Defoe.  And,  observe 
the  art  of  it,  under  all  the  simplicity — notice, 
for  example,  the  curious  weird  effect  produced 
by  the  studied  repetition  of  the  word  "dingle" 
coming  ever  round  and  round  like  the  master- 
note  in  a  chime.     Or  take  the  passage  about 


100  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
Britain  towards  the  end  of  "The  Bihle  in 
Spain."  I  hate  quoting  from  these  master- 
pieces, if  only  for  the  very  selfish  reason  that 
my  poor  setting  cannot  afford  to  show  up 
brilliants.  None  the  less,  cost  what  it  may, 
let  me  transcribe  that  one  noble  piece  of  im- 
passioned prose — 

"O  England!  long,  long  may  it  be  ere  the 
sun  of  thy  glory  sink  beneath  the  wave 
of  darkness !  Though  gloomy  and  portentous 
clouds  are  now  gathering  rapidly  around  thee, 
still,  still  may  it  please  the  Almighty  to  dis- 
perse them,  and  to  grant  thee  a  futurity 
longer  in  duration  and  still  brighter  in  renown 
than  thy  past!  Or,  if  thy  doom  be  at  hand, 
may  that  doom  be  a  noble  one,  and  worthy 
of  her  who  has  been  styled  the  Old  Queen  of 
the  waters!  May  thou  sink,  if  thou  dost 
sink,  amidst  blood  and  flame,  with  a  mighty 
noise,  causing  more  than  one  nation  to  par- 
ticipate in  thy  downfall!  Of  all  fates,  may 
it  please  the  Lord  to  preserve  thee  from  a 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  101 
disgraceful  and  a  slow  decay;  becoming,  ere 
extinct,  a  scorn  and  a  mockery  for  those  self- 
same foes  who  now,  though  they  envy  and 
abhor  thee,  still  fear  thee,  nay  even  against 
their  will,  honor  and  respect  thee.  .  .  . 
Remove  from  thee  the  false  prophets,  who 
have  seen  vanity  and  divined  lies;  who  have 
daubed  thy  wall  with  untempered  mortar,  that 
it  may  fall;  who  see  visions  of  peace  where 
there  is  no  peace;  who  have  strengthened  the 
hands  of  the  wicked,  and  made  the  heart  of 
the  righteous  sad.  Oh,  do  this,  and  fear  not 
the  result,  for  either  shall  thy  end  be  a  ma- 
jestic and  an  enviable  one;  or  God  shall  per- 
petuate thy  reign  upon  the  waters,  thou  Old 
Queen  1" 

Or  take  the  fight  with  the  Flaming  Tin- 
man. It's  too  long  for  quotation — but  read  it, 
read  every  word  of  it.  Where  in  the  language 
can  you  find  a  stronger,  more  condensed  and 
more  restrained  narrative?  I  have  seen  with 
my  own  eyes  many  a  noble  fight,  more  than 


102  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
one  international  battle,  where  the  best  of  two 
great  countries  have  been  pitted  against  each 
other — yet  the  second-hand  impression  of  Sor- 
row's description  leaves  a  more  vivid  remem- 
brance upon  my  mind  than  any  of  them.  This 
is  the  real  witchcraft  of  letters. 

He  was  a  great  fighter  himself.  He  has 
left  a  secure  reputation  in  other  than  literary 
circles — circles  which  would  have  been  amazed 
to  learn  that  he  was  a  \mter  of  books.  With 
his  natural  advantages,  his  six  foot  three  of 
height  and  his  staglike  agilitj^  he  could  hardly 
fail  to  be  formidable.  But  he  was  a  scientific 
sparrer  as  well,  though  he  had,  I  have  been 
told,  a  curious  sprawling  fashion  of  his  own. 
And  how  his  heart  was  in  it — how  he  loved 
the  fighting  men!  You  remember  his  thumb- 
nail sketches  of  his  heroes.  If  you  don't  I 
must  quote  one,  and  if  you  do  you  will  be  glad 
to  read  it  again — 

"There's  Cribb,  the  Champion  of  England, 
and  perhaps  the  best  man  in  England;  there 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  103 
he  is,  with  his  huge,  massive  figure,  and  face 
wonderfully  like  that  of  a  lion.  There  is 
Belcher,  the  younger,  not  the  mighty  one,  who 
is  gone  to  his  place,  but  the  Teucer  Belcher, 
the  most  scientific  pugilist  that  ever  entered 
a  ring,  only  wanting  strength  to  be  I  won't 
say  what.  He  appears  to  walk  before  me 
now,  as  he  did  that  evening,  with  his  white  hat, 
white  great-coat,  thin  genteel  figure,  springy 
step,  and  keen  determined  eye.  Crosses  him, 
what  a  contrast!  Grim,  savage  Shelton,  who 
has  a  civil  word  for  nobody,  and  a  hard  blow 
for  anybody.  Hard!  One  blow  given  with 
the  proper  play  of  his  athletic  arm  will  unsense 
a  giant.  Yonder  individual,  who  strolls  about 
with  his  hands  behind  him,  supporting  his 
brown  coat  lappets,  undersized,  and  who  looks 
anything  but  what  he  is,  is  the  king  of  the 
light-weights,  so-called — Randall!  The  terri- 
ble Randall,  who  has  Irish  blood  in  his  veins; 
not  the  better  for  that,  nor  the  worse ;  and  not 
far  from  him  is  his  last  antagonist,  Ned  Tur- 
ner, who,  though  beaten  by  him,  still  thinks 


104  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
himself  as  good  a  man,  in  whicli  he  is,  per- 
haps, right,  for  it  was  a  near  thing.  But  how 
shall  I  name  them  all?  They  were  there  by 
dozens,  and  all  tremendous  in  their  way. 
There  was  Bulldog  Hudson,  and  fearless 
Scroggins,  who  beat  the  conqueror  of  Sam  the 
Jew.  There  was  Black  Richmond — no,  he 
was  not  there,  but  I  knew  him  well ;  he  was  the 
most  dangerous  of  blacks,  even  with  a  broken 
thigh.  There  was  Purcell,  who  could  never 
conquer  until  all  seemed  over  with  him.  There 
was — ^what!  shall  I  name  thee  last?  Ay,  why 
not?  I  believe  that  thou  art  the  last  of  all  that 
strong  family  still  above  the  sod,  where  mayst 
thou  long  continue — true  piece  of  English 
stuff — Tom  of  Bedford.  Hail  to  thee,  Tom 
of  Bedford,  or  by  whatever  name  it  may  please 
thee  to  be  called.  Spring  or  Winter!  Hail 
to  thee,  six-foot  Englishman  of  the  brown 
eye,  worthy  to  have  carried  a  six-foot  bow  at 
riodden,  where  England's  yeomen  triumphed 
over  Scotland's  King,  his  clans  and  chivalry. 
Hail  to  thee,  last  of  English  bruisers,  after  all 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  105 
the  many  victories  which  thou  hast  achieved 
' — ^true  Enghsh  victories,  unbought  by  yellow 
gold." 

Those  are  words  from  the  heart.  Long 
may  it  be  before  we  lose  the  fighting  blood 
which  has  come  to  us  from  of  old!  In  a 
world  of  peace  we  shall  at  last  be  able  to  root 
it  from  our  natures.  In  a  world  which  is 
armed  to  the  teeth  it  is  the  last  and  only  guar- 
antee of  our  future.  Neither  our  numbers, 
nor  our  wealth,  nor  the  waters  which  guard 
us  can  hold  us  safe  if  once  the  old  iron  passes 
from  our  spirit.  Barbarous,  perhaps — but 
there  are  possibilities  for  barbarism,  and  none 
in  this  wide  world  for  effeminacy. 

Borrow's  views  of  literature  and  of  literary 
men  were  curious.  Publisher  and  brother 
author,  he  hated  them  with  a  fine  compre- 
hensive hatred.  In  all  his  books  I  cannot  re- 
call a  word  of  commendation  to  any  living 
writer,  nor  has  he  posthumous  praise  for  those 
of    the    generation    immediately    preceding. 


106       THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 

Southey,  indeed,  he  commends  with  what 
most  would  regard  as  exaggerated  warmth, 
but  for  the  rest  he  who  Hved  when  Dickens, 
Thackeray,  and  Tennyson  were  all  in  their 
glorious  prime,  looks  fixedly  past  them  at 
some  obscure  Dane  or  forgotten  Welshman. 
The  reason  was,  I  expect,  that  his  proud  soul 
was  bitterly  wounded  by  his  own  early  failures 
and  slow  recognition.  He  knew  himself  to  be 
a  chief  in  the  clan,  and  when  the  clan  heeded 
him  not  he  withdrew  in  haughty  disdain. 
Look  at  his  proud,  sensitive  face  and  you  hold 
the  key  to  his  life. 

Harking  back  and  talking  of  pugilism,  I 
recall  an  incident  which  gave  me  pleasure.  A 
friend  of  mine  read  a  pugilistic  novel  called 
"Rodney  Stone"  to  a  famous  Australian 
prize-fighter,  stretched  upon  a  bed  of  mortal 
sickness.  The  dying  gladiator  listened  with 
intent  interest  but  keen,  professional  criticism 
to  the  combats  of  the  novel.  The  reader  had 
got  to  the  point  where  the  young  amateur 
fights  the  brutal  Berks.     Berks  is  winded,  but 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  107 
holds  his  adversary  off  with  a  stiff  left  arm. 
The  amateur's  second  in  the  story,  an  old 
prize-fighter,  shouts  some  advice  to  him  as  to 
how  to  deal  with  the  situation.     "That's  right. 

By he's  got  him!"  yelled  the  stricken  man 

in  the  bed.  Who  cares  for  critics  after  that? 
You  can  see  my  own  devotion  to  the  ring 
in  that  trio  of  brown  volumes  which  stand, 
ajjpropriately  enough,  upon  the  flank  of  Bor- 
row. They  are  the  three  volumes  of  *'Pugi- 
listica,"  given  me  years  ago  by  my  old 
friend,  Robert  Barr,  a  mine  in  which  you  can 
never  pick  for  half  an  hour  without  striking 
it  rich.  Alas!  for  the  horrible  slang  of  those 
days,  the  vapid,  witless  Corinthian  talk,  with 
its  ogles  and  it  fogies,  its  pointless  jokes,  its 
maddening  habit  of  italicizing  a  word  or  two 
in  every  sentence.  Even  these  stern  and 
desperate  encounters,  fit  sports  for  the  men 
of  Albuera  and  Waterloo,  become  dull  and 
vulgar,  in  that  dreadful  jargon.  You  have  to 
turn  to  Hazlitt's  account  of  the  encounter 
between  the  Gasman  and  the  Bristol  Bull,  to 


108  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
feel  the  savage  strength  of  it  all.  It  is  a 
hardened  reader  who  does  not  wince  even  in 
print  before  that  frightful  right-hander  which 
felled  the  giant,  and  left  him  in  "red  ruin" 
from  ej^ebrow  to  jaw.  But  even  if  there  be 
no  Hazlitt  present  to  describe  such  a  combat 
it  is  a  poor  imagination  which  is  not  fired  by 
the  deeds  of  the  humble  heroes  who  lived 
once  so  vividly  upon  earth,  and  now  only  ap- 
peal to  faithful  ones  in  these  little-read  pages. 
They  were  picturesque  creatures,  men  of  great 
force  of  character  and  will,  who  reached  the 
limits  of  human  bravery  and  endurance. 
There  is  Jackson  on  the  cover,  gold  upon 
brown,  "gentleman  Jackson,"  Jackson  of  the 
balustrade  calf  and  the  noble  head,  who  wrote 
his  name  with  an  88-pound  weight  dangling 
from  his  little  finger. 

Here  is  a  pen-portrait  of  him  by  one  who 
knew  him  well — 

"I  can  see  him  now  as  I  saw  him  in  '84 
walking  down  Holborn  Hill,  towards  Smith- 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  109 
field.  He  had  on  a  scarlet  coat  worked  in  gold 
at  the  buttonholes,  ruffles  and  frill  of  fine  lace, 
a  small  white  stock,  no  collar  (they  were  not 
then  invented) ,  a  looped  hat  with  a  broad  black 
band,  buff  knee-breeches  and  long  silk  strings, 
striped  white  silk  stockings,  pumps  and  paste 
buckles;  his  waistcoat  was  pale  blue  satin, 
sprigged  with  white.  It  was  impossible  to 
look  on  his  fine  ample  chest,  his  noble  shoul- 
ders, his  waist  (if  anything  too  small),  his 
large  but  not  too  large  hips,  his  balustrade  calf 
and  beautifully  turned  but  not  over  delicate 
ankle,  his  firm  foot  and  peculiarly  small  hand, 
without  thinking  that  nature  had  sent  him  on 
earth  as  a  model.  On  he  went  at  a  good  five 
miles  and  a  half  an  hour,  the  envy  of  all  men 
and  the  admiration  of  all  women." 

Now,  that  is  a  discriminating  portrait — a 
portrait  which  really  helps  you  to  see  that 
which  the  writer  sets  out  to  describe.  After 
reading  it  one  can  understand  why  even  in 
reminiscent  sporting  desci'iptions  of  those  old 


110  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
days,  amid  all  the  Toms  and  Bills  and  Jacks, 
it  is  always  Mr.  John  Jackson.  He  was  the 
friend  and  instructor  of  Byron  and  of  half 
the  bloods  in  town.  Jackson  it  was  who,  in 
the  heat  of  combat,  seized  the  Jew  Mendoza 
by  the  hair,  and  so  ensured  that  the  pugs  for 
ever  afterwards  should  be  a  close-cropped 
race.  Inside  you  see  the  square  face  of  old 
Broughton,  the  supreme  fighting  man  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  the  man  whose  humble  am- 
bition it  was  to  begin  with  the  pivot  man  of 
the  Prussian  Guard,  and  work  his  way  through 
the  regiment.  He  had  a  chronicler,  the  good 
Captain  Godfrey,  who  has  written  some  Eng- 
lish which  would  take  some  beating.  How 
about  this  passage? — 

"He  stops  as  regularly  as  the  swordsman, 
and  carries  his  blows  truly  in  the  line;  he 
steps  not  back  distrustful  of  himself,  to  stop 
a  blow,  and  puddle  in  the  return,  with  an  arm 
unaided  by  his  body,  producing  but  flyflap 
blows.     IN^o!    Broughton    steps    boldly    and 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  111 
firmly  in,  bids  a  welcome  to  the  coming  blow; 
receives  it  with  his  guardian  arm;  then,  with 
a  general  summons  of  his  swelling  muscles, 
and  his  firm  body  seconding  his  arm,  and  sup- 
plying it  with  all  its  weight,  pours  the  pile- 
driving  force  upon  liis  man." 

One  would  like  a  little  more  from  the  gal- 
lant Captain.  Poor  Broughton!  He  fought 
once  too  often.  "Why,  damn  you,  you're 
beat !"  cried  the  Royal  Duke.  "Not  beat,  your 
highness,  but  I  can't  see  my  man!"  cried  the 
blinded  old  hero.  Alas,  there  is  the  tragedy 
of  the  ring  as  it  is  of  life !  The  wave  of  youth 
surges  ever  upwards,  and  the  wave  that  went 
before  is  swept  sobbing  on  to  the  shingle. 
"Youth  will  be  served,"  said  the  terse  old  pugs. 
But  what  so  sad  as  the  downfall  of  the  old 
champion !  Wise  Tom  Spring — Tom  of  Bed- 
ford, as  Borrow  calls  him — had  the  wit  to 
leave  the  ring  unconquered  in  the  prime  of 
his  fame.  Cribb  also  stood  out  as  a  cham- 
pion.    But  Broughton,   Slack,  Belcher,  and 


112  THROUGH  THE  iVIAGIC  DOOR 
the  rest — their  end  was  one  common  tragedy. 
The  latter  days  of  the  figliting  men  were 
often  curious  and  unexpected,  though  as  a 
rule  they  were  short-lived,  for  the  alternation 
of  the  excess  of  their  normal  existence  and 
the  asceticism  of  their  training  undermined 
their  constitution.  Their  popularity  among 
both  men  and  women  was  their  undoing,  and 
the  king  of  the  ring  went  down  at  last  before 
that  deadliest  of  light-weights,  the  microbe  of 
tubercle,  or  some  equally  fatal  and  perhaps 
less  reputable  bacillus.  The  crockiest  of  spec- 
tators had  a  better  chance  of  life  than  the  mag- 
nificent young  athlete  whom  he  had  come  to 
admire.  Jem  Belcher  died  at  30,  Hooper  at 
31,  Pearce,  the  Game  Chicken,  at  32,  Turner 
at  35,  Hudson  at  38,  Randall,  the  Nonpareil, 
at  34.  Occasionally,  when  they  did  reach  ma- 
ture age,  their  lives  took  the  strangest  turns. 
Gully,  as  is  well  known,  became  a  wealthy 
man,  and  Member  for  Pontefract  in  the  Re- 
form Parliament.  Humphries  developed  into 
a  successful  coal  merchant.     Jack  Martin  be- 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  113 
came  a  convinced  teetotaller  and  vegetarian. 
Jem  Ward,  the  Black  Diamond,  developed 
considerable  powers  as  an  artist.  Cribb, 
Spring",  Langan,  and  many  others,  were  suc- 
cessful publicans.  Strangest  of  all,  perhaps, 
was  Broughton,  who  spent  his  old  age  haunt- 
ing every  sale  of  old  pictures  and  hric-a-brac. 
One  who  saw  him  has  recorded  his  impression 
of  the  silent  old  gentleman,  clad  in  old-fash- 
ioned garb,  with  his  catalogue  in  his  hand — 
Broughton,  once  the  terror  of  England,  and 
now  the  harmless  and  gentle  collector. 

Many  of  them,  as  was  but  natural,  died 
violent  deaths,  some  by  accident  and  a  few 
by  their  own  hands.  No  man  of  the  first 
class  ever  died  in  the  ring.  The  nearest  ap- 
proach to  it  was  the  singular  and  mournful 
fate  which  befell  Simon  Byrne,  the  brave 
Irishman,  who  had  the  misfortune  to  cause  the 
death  of  his  antagonist,  Angus  INIackay,  and 
afterwards  met  his  own  end  at  the  hands  of 
Deaf  Burke.  Neither  Bj^-ne  nor  INIackay 
could,  however,  be  said  to  be  boxers  of  the 


114  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
very  first  rank.  It  certainly  would  appear, 
if  we  may  argue  from  the  prize-ring,  that  the 
human  machine  becomes  more  delicate  and  is 
more  sensitive  to  jar  or  shock.  In  the  early 
days  a  fatal  end  to  a  fight  was  exceedingly 
rare.  Gradually  such  tragedies  became  rather 
more  common,  until  now  even  with  the  gloves 
they  have  shocked  us  by  their  frequency,  and 
we  feel  that  the  rude  play  of  our  forefathers 
is  indeed  too  rough  for  a  more  highly  organ- 
ized generation.  Still,  it  may  help  us  to  clear 
our  minds  of  cant  if  we  remember  that  within 
two  or  three  years  the  hunting-field  and  the 
steeple-chase  claim  more  victims  than  the  prize- 
ring  has  done  in  two  centuries. 

Many  of  these  men  had  served  their  coun- 
try well  with  that  strength  and  courage  which 
brought  them  fame.  Cribb  was,  if  I  mistake 
not,  in  the  Royal  Navy.  So  was  the  terrible 
dwarf  Scroggins,  all  chest  and  shoulders, 
whose  springing  hits  for  many  a  year  carried 
all  before  them  until  the  canny  Welshman, 
Ned  Turner,  stopped  his  career,  only  to  be 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  115 
stopped  in  turn  by  the  brilliant  Irishman,  Jack 
Randall.  Shaw,  who  stood  high  among  the 
heavy-weights,  was  cut  to  pieces  by  the  French 
Cuirassiers  in  the  first  charge  at  Waterloo. 
The  brutal  Berks  died  greatly  in  the  breach 
of  Badajos.  The  lives  of  these  men  stood  for 
something,  and  that  was  just  the  one  supreme 
thing  which  the  times  called  for — an  unflinch- 
ing endurance  which  could  bear  up  against  a 
world  in  arms.  Look  at  Jem  Belcher — beau- 
tiful, heroic  Jem,  a  manlier  Byron — but  there, 
this  is  not  an  essay  on  the  old  prize-ring,  and 
one  man's  lore  is  another  man's  bore.  Let 
us  pass  those  three  low-down,  unjustifiable, 
fascinating  volumes,  and  on  to  nobler  topics 
beyond ! 


VI 

Which  are  the  great  short  stories  of  the  Eng- 
lish language?  Not  a  bad  basis  for  a  debate! 
This  I  am  sure  of:  that  there  are  far  fewer 
supremely  good  short  stories  than  there  are 
supremely  good  long  books.  It  takes  more 
exquisite  skill  to  carve  the  cameo  than  the 
statue.  But  the  strangest  thing  is  that  the 
two  excellences  seem  to  be  separate  and  even 
antagonistic.  Skill  in  the  one  by  no  means 
ensures  skill  in  the  other.  The  great  masters  of 
our  literature,  Fielding,  Scott,  Dickens, 
Thackeray,  Reade,  have  left  no  single  short 
story  of  outstanding  merit  behind  them,  with 
the  possible  exception  of  Wandering  Willie's 
Tale  in  "Red  Gauntlet."  On  the  other  hand, 
men  who  have  been  very  great  in  the  short 
story,  Stevenson,  Poe,  and  Bret  Harte,  have 

116 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR        117 

written  no  great  book.     The  champion  sprinter 
is  seldom  a  five-miler  as  well. 

Well,  now,  if  you  had  to  choose  your  team 
whom  would  you  put  in  ?  You  have  not  really 
a  large  choice.  What  are  the  points  by  which 
you  judge  them?  You  w^ant  strength,  nov- 
elty, compactness,  intensity  of  interest,  a  single 
vivid  impression  left  upon  the  mind.  Poe  is 
the  master  of  all.  I  may  remark  by  the  way 
that  it  is  the  sight  of  his  green  cover,  the  next 
in  order  upon  my  favorite  shelf,  which  has 
started  this  train  of  thought.  Poe  is,  to  my 
mind,  the  supreme  original  short  story  writer 
of  all  time.  His  brain  was  like  a  seed-pod  full 
of  seeds  which  flew  carelessly  around,  and 
from  which  have  sprung  nearly  all  our  modern 
types  of  story.  Just  think  of  what  he  did  in 
his  offhand,  prodigal  fashion,  seldom  troubling 
to  repeat  a  success,  but  pushing  on  to  some  new 
achievement.  To  him  must  be  ascribed  the 
monstrous  progeny  of  writers  on  the  detection 
of  crime — ''quorum  pars  parva  fuir  Each 
may  find  some  little  development  of  his  own, 


118  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
but  his  main  art  must  trace  back  to  those  ad- 
mirable stories  of  ]Monsieur  Dupin,  so  wonder- 
ful in  their  masterful  force,  their  reticence, 
their  quick  dramatic  point.  After  all,  men- 
tal acuteness  is  the  one  quality  which  can  be 
ascribed  to  the  ideal  detective,  and  when  that 
has  once  been  admirably  done,  succeeding  writ- 
ers must  necessarily  be  content  for  all  time  to 
follow  in  the  same  main  track.  But  not  only  is 
Poe  the  originator  of  the  detective  storj^;  all 
treasure-hunting,  crj^ptogram-solving  yarns 
trace  back  to  his  "Gold  Bug,"  just  as  all 
pseudo-scientific  Verne-and-Wells  stories  have 
their  prototypes  in  the  "Voyage  to  the  3Ioon," 
and  the  "Case  of  jNlonsieur  Valdemar."  If 
every  man  who  receives  a  cheque  for  a  story 
which  owes  its  springs  to  Poe  were  to  pay 
tithe  to  a  monument  for  the  master,  he  would 
have  a  pyramid  as  big  as  that  of  Cheops. 

And  yet  I  could  only  give  him  two  places 
in  my  team.  One  would  be  for  the  "Gold 
Bug,"  the  other  for  the  "JNIurder  in  the  Rue 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  119 
Morgue."  I  do  not  see  how  either  of  those 
could  be  bettered.  But  I  would  not  admit 
perfect  excellence  to  any  other  of  his  stories. 
These  two  have  a  proportion  and  a  perspective 
which  are  lacking  in  the  others,  the  horror 
or  weirdness  of  the  idea  intensified  b}^  the  cool- 
ness of  the  narrator  and  of  the  principal 
actor,  Dupin  in  the  one  case  and  Le  Grand 
in  the  other.  The  same  may  be  said  of  Bret 
Harte,  also  one  of  those  great  short  story  tell- 
ers who  proved  himself  incapable  of  a  longer 
flight.  He  was  always  like  one  of  his  own 
gold-miners  who  struck  a  rich  pocket,  but  found 
no  continuous  reef.  The  pocket  was,  alas,  a 
very  limited  one,  but  the  gold  was  of  the  best. 
"The  Luck  of  Roaring  Camp"  and  "Tennes- 
see's Partner"  are  both,  I  think,  worthy  of  a 
place  among  my  immortals.  They  are,  it  is 
true,  so  tinged  with  Dickens  as  to  be  almost 
parodies  of  the  master,  but  they  have  a  sym- 
metry and  satisfying  completeness  as  short 
stories   to  which  Dickens   himself   never   at- 


ISO       THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
tained.     The  man  who  can  read  those  two  sto- 
ries without  a  gulp  in  the  throat  is  not  a  man 
I  envy. 

And  Stevenson?  Surely  he  shall  have  two 
places  also,  for  where  is  a  finer  sense  of  what 
the  short  story  can  do?  He  wrote,  in  my 
judgment,  two  masterpieces  in  his  life,  and 
each  of  them  is  essentially  a  short  story, 
though  the  one  happened  to  be  published  as 
a  volume.  The  one  is  "Dr.  Jekyll  and  IMr. 
Hyde,"  which,  whether  you  take  it  as  a  vivid 
narrative  or  as  a  wonderfully  deep  and  true 
allegory,  is  a  supremely  fine  bit  of  work.  The 
other  story  of  my  choice  would  be  "The 
Pavilion  on  the  Links" — the  very  model  of 
dramatic  narrative.  That  story  stamped  itself 
so  clearly  on  my  brain  when  I  read  it  in  Corn- 
hill  that  when  I  came  across  it  again  many 
years  afterwards  in  volume  form,  I  was  able 
instantly  to  recognize  two  small  modifications 
of  the  text — each  verj^  much  for  the  worse — 
from  the  oris^inal  form.  Thev  were  small 
things,    but    they    seemed    somehow    like    a 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  121 
chip  on  a  perfect  statue.  Surely  it  is  only 
a  very  fine  work  of  art  which  could  leave  so 
definite  an  impression  as  that.  Of  course, 
there  are  a  dozen  other  of  his  stories  which 
would  put  the  average  writer's  best  work  to 
shame,  all  with  the  strange  Stevenson  glamour 
upon  them,  of  which  I  may  discourse  later, 
but  only  to  those  two  would  I  be  disposed  to 
admit  that  complete  excellence  which  would 
pass  them  into  such  a  team  as  this. 

And  who  else?  If  it  be  not  an  imperti- 
nence to  mention  a  contemporary  I  should 
certainly  have  a  brace  from  Rudyard  Kipling. 
His  power,  his  compression,  his  dramatic  sense, 
his  way  of  glowing  suddenly  into  a  vivid  flame, 
all  mark  him  as  a  great  master.  But  which 
are  we  to  choose  from  that  long  and  varied 
collection,  many  of  which  have  claims  to  the 
highest?  Speaking  from  memory,  I  should 
say  that  the  stories  of  his  which  have  impressed 
me  most  are  "The  Drums  of  the  Fore  and 
Aft,"  "The  Man  who  Would  be  King,"  "The 
Man  who  Was,"  and  "The  Brushwood  Boy." 


122        THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
Perhaps,  on  the  whole,  it  is  the  first  two  which 
I  should  choose  to  add  to  my  list  of  master- 
pieces. 

They  are  stories  which  invite  criticism  and 
yet  defy  it.  The  great  batsman  at  cricket  is 
the  man  who  can  play  an  unorthodox  game, 
take  every  liberty  which  is  denied  to  inferior 
players,  and  yet  succeed  brilliantly  in  the 
face  of  his  disregard  of  law.  So  it  is  here. 
I  should  think  the  model  of  these  stories  is 
the  most  dangerous  that  any  young  writer 
could  follow.  There  is  digression,  that  most 
deadly  fault  in  the  short  narrative;  there  is 
incoherence,  there  is  want  of  proportion  which 
makes  the  story  stand  still  for  pages  and  bound 
forward  in  a  few  sentences.  But  genius  over- 
rides all  that,  just  as  the  great  cricketer  hooks 
the  off  ball  and  glides  the  straight  one  to  leg. 
There  is  a  dash,  an  exuberance,  a  full-blooded, 
confident  mastery  which  carries  everything  be- 
fore it.  Yes,  no  team  of  immortals  would  be 
complete  which  did  not  contain  at  least  two 
representatives  of  Kipling. 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  123 
And  now  whom?  Nathaniel  Hawthorne 
never  appealed  in  the  highest  degree  to  me. 
The  fault,  I  am  sure,  is  my  own,  hut  I  always 
seemed  to  crave  stronger  fare  than  he  gave 
me.  It  was  too  subtle,  too  elusive,  for  effect. 
Indeed,  I  have  been  more  affected  by  some 
of  the  short  work  of  his  son  Julian,  though 
I  can  quite  understand  the  high  artistic  claims 
which  the  senior  writer  has,  and  the  delicate 
charm  of  his  style.  There  is  Bulwer  Lytton  as 
a  claimant.  His  "Haunted  and  the  Haunters" 
is  the  very  best  ghost  story  that  I  know.  As 
such  I  should  include  it  in  my  list.  There  was 
a  story,  too,  in  one  of  the  old  Blachwoods — 
"JNIetempsychosis"  it  was  called,  which  left  so 
deep  an  impression  upon  my  mind  that  I 
should  be  inclined,  though  it  is  many  years 
since  I  read  it,  to  number  it  with  the  best. 
Another  story  which  has  the  characteristics  of 
great  work  is  Grant  Allen's  "John  Creedy." 
So  good  a  story  upon  so  philosophic  a  basis 
deserves  a  place  among  the  best.  There  is 
some  first-class  work  to  be  picked  also  from 


124  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
the  contemporary  work  of  Wells  and  of  Quil- 
ler-Couch  which  reaches  a  high  standard. 
One  little  sketch— "Old  CEson"  in  "Noughts 
and  Crosses" — is,  in  my  opinion,  as  good  as 
anything  of  the  kind  which  I  have  ever  read. 

And  all  this  didactic  talk  comes  from  look- 
ing at  that  old  green  cover  of  Poe.  I  am 
sure  that  if  I  had  to  name  the  few  books 
which  have  really  influenced  my  own  life  I 
should  have  to  put  this  one  second  only  to 
Macaulay's  Essays.  I  read  it  young  when  my 
mind  was  plastic.  It  stimulated  my  imagina- 
tion and  set  before  me  a  supreme  example  of 
dignity  and  force  in  the  methods  of  telling  a 
story.  It  is  not  altogether  a  healthy  influence, 
perhaps.  It  turns  the  thoughts  too  forcibly  to 
the  morbid  and  the  strange. 

He  was  a  saturnine  creature,  devoid  of  hu- 
mor and  geniality,  with  a  love  for  the  gro- 
tesque and  the  terrible.  The  reader  must 
himself  furnish  the  counteracting  qualities  or 
Poe  may  become  a  dangerous  comrade.  We 
know  along  what  perilous  tracks  and  into  what 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  125 
deadly  quagmires  his  strange  mind  led  him, 
down  to  that  gray  October  Sunday  morning, 
when  he  was  picked  up,  a  dying  man,  on  the 
sidewalk  at  Baltimore,  at  an  age  which  should 
have  seen  him  at  the  very  prime  of  his  strength 
and  his  manhood. 

I  have  said  that  I  look  upon  Poe  as  the 
world's  supreme  short  story  writer.  His  near- 
est rival,  I  should  say,  was  Maupassant.  The 
great  Norman  never  rose  to  the  extreme  force 
and  originality  of  the  American,  but  he  had  a 
natural  inherited  power,  an  inborn  instinct 
towards  the  right  way  of  making  his  effects, 
which  mark  him  as  a  great  master.  He  pro- 
duced stories  because  it  was  in  him  to  do  so, 
as  naturally  and  as  perfectly  as  an  apple  tree 
produces  apples.  What  a  fine,  sensitive, 
artistic  touch  it  is !  How  easily  and  delicately 
the  points  are  made !  How  clear  and  nervous 
is  his  style,  and  how  free  from  that  redundancy 
which  disfigures  so  much  of  our  English  work! 
He  pares  it  down  to  the  quick  all  the  time. 

I  cannot  write  the  name  of  Maupassant 


126  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
without  recalling  what  was  either  a  spiritual 
interposition  or  an  extraordinary  coincidence 
in  my  own  life.  I  had  been  traveling  in 
Switzerland  and  had  visited,  among  other 
places,  that  Gemmi  Pass,  where  a  huge  cliff 
separates  a  French  from  a  German  canton. 
On  the  summit  of  this  cliff  was  a  small  inn, 
where  we  broke  our  journey.  It  was  ex- 
plained to  us  that,  although  the  inn  was  in- 
habited all  the  year  round,  still  for  about  three 
months  in  winter  it  was  utterly  isolated,  be- 
cause it  could  at  any  time  only  be  approached 
by  winding  paths  on  the  mountain  side,  and 
when  these  became  obliterated  by  snow  it  was 
impossible  either  to  come  up  or  to  descend. 
They  could  see  the  lights  in  the  valley  beneath 
them,  but  were  as  lonely  as  if  they  lived  in  the 
moon.  So  curious  a  situation  naturally  ap- 
pealed to  one's  imagination,  and  I  speedily 
began  to  build  up  a  short  story  in  my  own 
mind,  depending  upon  a  group  of  strong  an- 
tagonistic characters  being  penned  up  in  this 
inn,  loathing  each  other  and  yet  utterly  unable 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  127 
to  get  away  from  each  other's  society,  every 
day  bringing  them  nearer  to  tragedy.  For  a 
week  or  so,  as  I  traveled,  I  was  turning  over 
the  idea. 

At  the  end  of  that  time  I  returned  through 
France.  Having  nothing  to  read  I  happened 
to  buy  a  volume  of  Maupassant's  Tales  which 
I  had  never  seen  before.  The  first  story  was 
called  "L'Auberge"  (The  Inn) — and  as  I  ran 
my  eye  down  the  printed  page  I  was  amazed 
to  see  the  two  words,  "Kandersteg"  and 
"Gemmi  Pass."  I  settled  down  and  read  it 
with  ever-growing  amazement.  The  scene 
was  laid  in  the  inn  I  had  visited.  The  plot 
depended  on  the  isolation  of  a  group  of  peo- 
ple through  the  snowfall.  Everything  that  I 
imagined  was  there,  save  that  Maupassant  had 
brought  in  a  savage  hound. 

Of  course,  the  genesis  of  the  thing  is  clear 
enough.  He  had  chanced  to  visit  the  inn,  and 
had  been  impressed  as  I  had  been  by  the  same 
train  of  thought.  All  that  is  quite  intelligible. 
But  what  is  perfectly  marvelous  is  that  in 


128  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
that  short  journey  I  should  have  chanced  to 
buy  the  one  book  in  all  the  world  which  would 
prevent  me  from  making  a  public  fool  of  my- 
self, for  who  would  ever  have  believed  that  my 
work  was  not  an  imitation?  I  do  not  think 
that  the  hypothesis  of  coincidence  can  cover 
the  facts.  It  is  one  of  several  incidents  in 
my  life  which  have  convinced  me  of  spiritual 
interposition — of  the  promptings  of  some 
beneficent  force  outside  ourselves,  which  tries 
to  help  us  where  it  can.  The  old  Catholic 
doctrine  of  the  Guardian  Angel  is  not  only  a 
beautiful  one,  but  has  in  it,  I  believe,  a  real 
basis  of  truth. 

Or  is  it  that  our  subliminal  ego,  to  use  the 
jargon  of  the  new  psychology,  or  our  astral,  in 
the  terms  of  the  new  theology,  can  learn  and 
convey  to  the  mind  that  which  our  own  known 
senses  are  unable  to  apprehend?  But  that  is 
too  long  a  side  track  for  us  to  turn  down  it. 

When  Maupassant  chose  he  could  run  Poe 
close  in  that  domain  of  the  strange  and  weird 
which  the  American  had  made  so  entirely  his 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  129 
own.  Have  you  read  JNIaupassant's  story 
called  "La  Horla"?  That  is  as  good  a  bit 
of  diablerie  as  you  could  wish  for.  And  the 
Frenchman  has,  of  course,  far  the  broader 
range.  He  has  a  keen  sense  of  humor, 
breaking  out  beyond  all  decorum  in  some  of 
his  stories,  but  giving  a  pleasant  sub-flavor 
to  all  of  them.  And  yet,  when  all  is  said,  who 
can  doubt  that  the  austere  and  dreadful  Amer- 
ican is  far  the  greater  and  more  original  mind 
of  the  two? 

Talking  of  weird  American  stories,  have 
you  ever  read  any  of  the  works  of  Ambrose 
Bierce?  I  have  one  of  his  works  there,  "In 
the  Midst  of  Life."  This  man  had  a  flavor 
quite  his  own,  and  was  a  great  artist  in  his 
way.  It  is  not  cheering  reading,  but  it  leaves 
its  mark  upon  you,  and  that  is  the  proof  of 
good  work. 

I  have  often  wondered  where  Poe  got  his 
style.  There  is  a  somber  majesty  about  his 
best  work,  as  if  it  were  carved  from  polished 
jet,  which  is  peculiarly  his  own.     I  dare  say  if 


130        THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
I  took  down  that  volume  I  could  light  any- 
where upon  a  paragraph  which  would  show 
you  what  I  mean.     This  is  the  kind  of  thing — 

"Now  there  are  fine  tales  in  the  volumes 
of  the  Magi — in  the  iron-bound  melancholy 
volumes  of  the  Magi.  Therein,  I  say,  are 
glorious  histories  of  the  heaven  and  of  the 
earth,  and  of  the  mighty  sea — and  of  the 
genius  that  overruled  the  sea,  and  the  earth, 
and  the  lofty  heaven.  There  was  much  lore, 
too,  in  the  sayings  which  were  said  by  the 
Sybils,  and  holy,  holy  things  were  heard  of 
old  by  the  dim  leaves  which  trembled  round 
Dodona,  but  as  Allah  liveth,  that  fable  which 
the  Demon  told  me  as  he  sat  by  my  side  in 
the  shadow  of  the  tomb,  I  hold  to  be  the  most 
wonderful  of  all."  Or  this  sentence:  "And 
then  did  we,  the  seven,  start  from  our  seats  in 
horror,  and  stand  trembling  and  aghast,  for 
the  tones  in  the  voice  of  the  shadow  were  not 
the  tones  of  any  one  being,  but  of  a  multitude 
of  beings,  and,  varying  in  their  cadences  from 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  131 
syllable  to  syllable,  fell  duskily  upon  our  ears 
in  the  well-remembered  and  familiar  accents  of 
many  thousand  departed  friends." 

Is  there  not  a  sense  of  austere  dignity? 
No  man  invents  a  style.  It  always  derives 
back  from  some  influence,  or,  as  is  more  usual, 
it  is  a  compromise  between  several  influences. 
I  cannot  trace  Poe's.  And  yet  if  Hazlitt  and 
De  Quincey  had  set  forth  to  tell  weird  stories 
they  might  have  developed  something  of  the 
kind. 

Now,  by  your  leave,  we  will  pass  on  to  my 
noble  edition  of  "The  Cloister  and  the 
Hearth,"  the  next  volume  on  the  left. 

I  notice,  in  glancing  over  my  rambling  re- 
marks, that  I  classed  "Ivanhoe"  as  the  second 
historical  novel  of  the  century.  I  dare  say 
there  are  many  who  would  give  "Esmond"  the 
first  place,  and  I  can  quite  understand  their 
position,  although  it  is  not  my  own.  I  recog- 
nize the  beauty  of  the  style,  the  consistency 
of  the  character-drawing,  the  absolutely  per- 


132  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
feet  Queen  Anne  atmosphere.  There  was 
never  an  historical  novel  written  by  a  man  who 
knew  his  period  so  thoroughly.  But,  great  as 
these  virtues  are,  they  are  not  the  essential  in 
a  novel.  The  essential  in  a  novel  is  interest, 
though  Addison  unkindly  remarked  that  the 
real  essential  was  that  the  pastrycooks  should 
never  run  short  of  paper.  Now  "Esmond" 
is,  in  my  opinion,  exceedingly  interesting  dur- 
ing the  campaigns  in  the  Lowlands,  and  when 
our  Machiavelian  hero,  the  Duke,  comes  in,  and 
also  whenever  Lord  Mohun  shows  his  ill- 
omened  face;  but  there  are  long  stretches  of 
the  story  which  are  heavy  reading.  A  pre- 
eminently good  novel  must  always  advance  and 
never  mark  time.  "Ivanhoe"  never  halts  for 
an  instant,  and  that  just  makes  its  superiority 
as  a  novel  over  "Esmond,"  though  as  a  piece 
of  literature  I  think  the  latter  is  the  more  per- 
fect. 

No,  if  I  had  three  votes,  I  should  plump 
them  all  for  "The  Cloister  and  the  Hearth," 
as  being  our  greatest  historical  novel,  and,  in- 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  133 
deed,  as  being  our  greatest  novel  of  any  sort. 
I  think  I  may  claim  to  have  read  most  of  the 
more  famous  foreign  novels  of  last  century, 
and  (speaking  only  for  myself  and  within 
the  limits  of  my  reading)  I  have  been  more 
impressed  by  that  book  of  Reade's  and  by  Tol- 
stoi's "Peace  and  War"  than  by  any  others. 
They  seem  to  me  to  stand  at  the  very  top  of 
the  century's  fiction.  There  is  a  certain  resem- 
blance in  the  two — the  sense  of  space,  the  num- 
ber of  figures,  the  way  in  which  characters 
di'op  in  and  drop  out.  The  Englishman  is  the 
more  romantic.  The  Russian  is  the  more  real 
and  earnest.     But  they  are  both  great. 

Think  of  what  Reade  does  in  that  one  book. 
He  takes  the  reader  by  the  hand,  and  he  leads 
him  away  into  the  Middle  Ages,  and  not  a  con- 
ventional study-built  Middle  Age,  but  a  period 
quivering  with  life,  full  of  folk  who  are  as 
human  and  real  as  a  'bus-load  in  Oxford 
Street.  He  takes  him  through  Holland,  he 
shows  him  the  painters,  the  dykes,  the  life.  He 
leads  him  down  the  long  line  of  the  Rhine,  the 


134  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
spinal  marrow  of  Medieval  Europe.  He 
shows  him  the  dawn  of  printing,  the  begin- 
nings of  freedom,  the  life  of  the  great  mer- 
cantile cities  of  South  Germany,  the  state  of 
Italy,  the  artist-life  of  Rome,  the  monastic 
institutions  on  the  eve  of  the  Reformation. 
And  all  this  between  the  covers  of  one  book,  so 
naturally  introduced,  too,  and  told  with  such 
vividness  and  spirit.  Apart  from  the  huge 
scope  of  it,  the  mere  study  of  Gerard's  own 
nature,  his  rise,  his  fall,  his  regeneration,  the 
whole  pitiable  tragedy  at  the  end,  make  the 
book  a  great  one.  It  contains,  I  think,  a 
blending  of  knowledge  with  imagination, 
which  makes  it  stand  alone  in  our  literature. 
Let  any  one  read  the  "Autobiography  of  Ben- 
venuto  Cellini,"  and  then  Charles  Reade's 
picture  of  Medieval  Roman  life,  if  he  wishes 
to  appreciate  the  way  in  which  Reade  has 
collected  his  rough  ore  and  has  then  smelted 
it  all  down  in  his  fiery  imagination.  It  is 
a  good  thing  to  have  the  industry  to  collect 
facts.     It  is  a  greater  and  a  rarer  one  to  have 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR        135 

the  tact  to  know  how  to  use  them  when  you 
have  got  them.  To  be  exact  without  pedantry, 
and  thorough  without  being  dull,  that  should 
be  the  ideal  of  the  writer  of  historical  romance. 

Keade  is  one  of  the  most  perplexing  figures 
in  our  literature.  Never  was  there  a  man  so 
hard  to  place.  At  his  best  he  is  the  best  we 
have.  At  his  worst  he  is  below  the  level  of 
Surreyside  melodrama.  But  his  best  have 
weak  pieces,  and  his  worst  have  good.  There 
is  always  silk  among  his  cotton,  and  cotton 
among  his  silk.  But,  for  all  his  flaws,  the  man 
who,  in  addition  to  the  great  book  of  which 
I  have  already  spoken,  wrote  "It  is  Never  Too 
Late  to  Mend,"  "Hard  Cash,"  "Foul  Play," 
and  "Griffith  Gaunt,"  must  alwaj^s  stand  in 
the  very  first  rank  of  our  novelists. 

There  is  a  quality  of  heart  about  his  work 
which  I  recognize  nowhere  else.  He  so  abso- 
lutely loves  his  own  heroes  and  heroines,  while 
he  so  cordially  detests  his  own  villains,  that  he 
sweeps  your  emotions  along  with  his  own.  No 
one  has  ever  spoken  warmly  enough  of  the  hu- 


136  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
inanity  and  the  lovability  of  his  women.  It  is 
a  rare  gift — very  rare  for  a  man — this  power 
of  drawing  a  human  and  dehghtful  girl.  If 
there  is  a  better  one  in  nineteenth-century  fic- 
tion than  JuHa  Dodd  I  have  never  had  the 
pleasure  of  meeting  her.  A  man  who  could 
draw  a  character  so  delicate  and  so  delightful, 
and  yet  could  write  such  an  episode  as  that  of 
the  Robber  Inn  in  "The  Cloister  and  the 
Hearth,"  adventurous  romance  in  its  highest 
form,  has  such  a  range  of  power  as  is  granted 
to  few  men.  My  hat  is  always  ready  to  come 
off  to  Charles  Reade. 


VII 

It  is  good  to  have  the  magic  door  shut  behind 
us.  On  the  other  side  of  that  door  are  the 
world  and  its  troubles,  hopes  and  fears,  head- 
aches and  heartaches,  ambitions  and  dis- 
appointments; but  within,  as  you  lie  back  on 
the  green  settee,  and  face  the  long  lines  of 
your  silent  soothing  comrades,  there  is  only 
peace  of  spirit  and  rest  of  mind  in  the  com- 
pany  of  the  great  dead.  Learn  to  love,  learn 
to  admire  them ;  learn  to  know  what  their  com- 
radeshi])  means;  for  until  you  have  done  so 
the  greatest  solace  and  anodyne  God  has  given 
man  have  not  yet  shed  their  blessing  upon  you. 
Here  behind  this  magic  door  is  the  rest  house, 
where  you  may  forget  the  past,  enjoy  the  pres- 
ent, and  prepare  for  the  future. 

You  who  have  sat  with  me  before  upon  the 
green  settee  are  familiar  with  the  upper  shelf, 

137 


138  TIIllOUGPI  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
with  the  tattered  INIacaulay,  the  dapper  Gib- 
bon, the  drab  Boswell,  the  oHve-green  Scott, 
the  pied  Borrow,  and  all  the  goodly  company 
who  rub  shoulders  yonder.  By  the  way,  how 
one  wishes  that  one's  dear  friends  would  only 
be  friends  also  with  each  other.  Whj^  should 
Borrow  snarl  so  churlishly  at  Scott?  One 
would  have  thought  that  noble  spirit  and  ro- 
mantic fancy  would  have  charmed  the  huge 
vagrant,  and  yet  there  is  no  word  too  bitter  for 
the  younger  man  to  use  towards  the  elder. 
The  fact  is  that  Borrow  had  one  dangerous 
virus  in  him — a  poison  which  distorts  the 
whole  vision — for  he  was  a  bigoted  sectarian 
in  religion,  seeing  no  virtue  outside  his  own 
interpretation  of  the  great  riddle.  Down- 
right heathendom,  the  blood-stained  Berserk  or 
the  chanting  Druid,  appealed  to  his  mind 
through  his  imagination,  but  the  man  of  his 
own  creed  and  time  who  differed  from  him  in 
minutiae  of  ritual,  or  in  the  interpretation  of 
mystic  passages,  was  at  once  evil  to  the  bone, 
and  he  had  no  charity  of  any  sort  for  such  a 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  139 
person.  Scott  therefore,  with  his  reverent  re- 
gard for  old  usages,  became  at  once  hateful 
in  his  eyes.  In  any  case  he  was  a  disap- 
pointed man,  the  big  Borrow,  and  I  cannot 
remember  that  he  ever  had  much  to  say  that 
was  good  of  any  brother  author.  Only  in  the 
bards  of  Wales  and  in  the  Scalds  of  the  Sagas 
did  he  seem  to  find  his  kindred  spirits,  though 
it  has  been  suggested  that  his  complex  nature 
took  this  means  of  informing  the  world  that  he 
could  read  both  Cymric  and  Norse.  But  we 
must  not  be  unkind  behind  the  magic  door — 
and  yet  to  be  charitable  to  the  uncharitable  is 
surely  the  crown  of  virtue. 

So  much  for  the  top  line,  concerning  which 
I  have  already  gossiped  for  six  sittings,  but 
there  is  no  surcease  for  you,  reader,  for  as  you 
see  there  is  a  second  line,  and  yet  a  third,  all 
equally  dear  to  my  heart,  and  all  appealing  in 
the  same  degree  to  my  emotions  and  to  my 
memory.  Be  as  patient  as  you  may,  while  I 
talk  of  these  old  friends,  and  tell  you  why  I 
love  them,  and  all  that  they  have  meant  to  me 


140  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
in  the  past.  If  you  picked  any  book  from 
that  line  you  would  be  picking  a  little  fiber 
also  from  my  mind,  very  small,  no  doubt,  and 
yet  an  intimate  and  essential  part  of  what  is 
now  myself.  Hereditary  impulses,  personal 
exj)eriences,  books — those  are  the  three  forces 
which  go  to  the  making  of  man.  These  are 
the  books. 

This  second  line  consists,  as  you  see,  of 
novelists  of  the  eighteenth  century,  or  those 
of  them  whom  I  regard  as  essential.  After 
all,  putting  aside  single  books,  such  as  Sterne's 
"Tristram  Shandy,"  Goldsmith's  "Vicar  of 
Wakefield,"  and  Miss  Burney's  "Evelina," 
there  are  only  three  authors  who  count,  and 
they  in  turn  wrote  only  three  books  each,  of 
first-rate  importance,  so  that  by  the  mastery 
of  nine  books  one  might  claim  to  have  a  fairly 
broad  view  of  this  most  important  and  distinc- 
tive branch  of  English  literature.  The  three 
men  are,  of  course,  Fielding,  Richardson,  and 
Smollett.  The  books  are:  Richardson's 
"Clarissa    Harlowe,"    "Pamela,"    and    "Sir 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  141 
Charles  Grandison";  Fielding's  "Tom  Jones," 
"Joseph  Andrews,"  and  "Ameha";  Smollett's 
"Peregrine  Pickle,"  "Humphrey  Clinker," 
and  "Roderick  Random."  There  we  have 
the  real  work  of  the  three  great  contempora- 
ries who  illuminated  the  middle  of  the  eight- 
eenth century — only  nine  volumes  in  all.  Let 
us  walk  around  these  nine  volumes,  therefore, 
and  see  whether  we  cannot  discriminate  and 
throw  a  little  light,  after  this  interval  of  a 
hundred  and  fifty  years,  upon  their  compara- 
tive aims,  and  how  far  they  have  justified  them 
by  the  permanent  value  of  their  work.  A  fat 
little  bookseller  in  the  City,  a  rakehell  wit  of 
noble  blood,  and  a  rugged  Scotch  surgeon 
from  the  navy — those  are  the  three  strange  im- 
mortals who  now  challenge  a  comparison — 
the  three  men  who  dominate  the  fiction  of  their 
century,  and  to  whom  we  owe  it  that  the  life 
and  the  types  of  that  century  are  familiar  to 
us,  their  fifth  generation. 

It  is  not  a  subject  to  be  dogmatic  upon, 
for  I   can  imagine  that  these  three  writers 


142  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
would  appeal  quite  differently  to  every  tem- 
perament, and  that  whichever  one  might  de- 
sire to  champion  one  could  find  arguments 
to  sustain  one's  choice.  Yet  I  cannot  think 
that  any  large  section  of  the  critical  puhlic 
could  maintain  that  Smollett  was  on  the  same 
level  as  the  other  two.  Ethically  he  is  gross, 
though  his  grossness  is  accompanied  by  a  full- 
blooded  humor  which  is  more  mirth-compel- 
ling than  the  more  polished  wit  of  his  rivals. 
I  can  remember  in  callow  boyhood — puris  om- 
nia pura — reading  "Peregrine  Pickle,"  and 
laughing  until  I  cried  over  the  Banquet  in  the 
Fashion  of  the  Ancients.  I  read  it  again  in 
my  manhood  with  the  same  effect,  though  with 
a  greater  appreciation  of  its  inherent  bestial- 
ity. That  merit,  a  gross  primitive  merit,  he 
has  in  a  high  degree,  but  in  no  other  respect 
can  he  challenge  comparison  with  either  Field- 
ing or  Richardson.  His  view  of  life  is  far 
more  limited,  his  characters  less  varied,  his  in- 
cidents less  distinctive,  and  his  thoughts  less 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  143 
deep.  Assuredly  I,  for  one,  should  award  him 
the  third  place  in  the  trio. 

But  how  about  Richardson  and  Fielding? 
There  is  indeed  a  competition  of  giants.  Let 
us  take  the  points  of  each  in  turn,  and  then 
compare  them  with  each  other. 

There  is  one  characteristic,  the  rarest  and 
subtlest  of  all,  which  each  of  them  had  in  a 
supreme  degree.  Each  could  draw  the  most 
delightful  women — the  most  perfect  women, 
I  think,  in  the  whole  range  of  our  literature. 
If  the  eighteenth-century  women  were  like 
that,  then  the  eighteenth-century  men  got  a 
great  deal  more  than  they  ever  deserved. 
They  had  such  a  charming  little  dignity  of 
their  own,  such  good  sense,  and  j^et  such  dear, 
prett}^  dainty  ways,  so  human  and  so  charm- 
ing, that  even  now  they  become  our  ideals. 
One  cannot  come  to  know  them  without  a 
double  emotion,  one  of  respectful  devotion  to- 
wards themselves,  and  the  other  of  abhorrence 
for  the  herd  of  swine  who  suiTounded  them. 


144  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
Pamela,  Plarriet  Byron,  Clarissa,  Amelia,  and 
Sophia  Western  were  all  equally  delightful, 
and  it  was  not  the  negative  charm  of  the  inno- 
cent and  colorless  woman,  the  amiahle  doll  of 
the  nineteenth  century,  but  it  was  a  beauty  of 
nature  depending  upon  an  alert  mind,  clear 
and  strong  principles,  true  womanly  feelings, 
and  complete  feminine  charm.  In  this  respect 
our  rival  authors  may  claim  a  tie,  for  I  could 
not  give  a  preference  to  one  set  of  these  per- 
fect creatures  over  another.  The  plump  little 
printer  and  the  worn-out  man-about-town  had 
each  a  supreme  woman  in  his  mind. 

But  their  men !  Alas,  what  a  drop  is  there ! 
To  say  that  we  are  all  capable  of  doing  what 
Tom  Jones  did —  as  I  have  seen  stated — is  the 
worst  form  of  inverted  cant,  the  cant  which 
makes  us  out  worse  than  we  are.  It  is  a  libel 
on  mankind  to  say  that  a  man  who  truly  loves 
a  woman  is  usually  false  to  her,  and,  above 
all,  a  libel  that  he  should  be  false  in  the  vile 
fashion  which  aroused  good  Tom  Newcome's 
indignation.     Tom  Jones  was  no  more  fit  to 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  14*5 
touch  the  hem  of  Sophia's  dress  than  Captain 
Booth  was  to  be  the  mate  of  Ameha.  Never 
once  has  Fielding  drawn  a  gentleman,  save 
perhaps  Squire  Alworthy.  A  lusty,  brawling, 
good-hearted,  material  creature  was  the  best 
that  he  could  fashion.  Where,  in  his  heroes, 
is  there  one  touch  of  distinction,  of  spiritual- 
ity, of  nobility?  Here  I  think  that  the  ple- 
beian printer  has  done  very  much  better  than 
the  aristocrat.  Sir  Charles  Grandison  is  a 
very  noble  type — spoiled  a  little  by  over-cod- 
dling on  the  part  of  his  creator  perhaps,  but 
a  very  high-souled  and  exquisite  gentleman 
all  the  same.  Had  he  married  Sophia  or 
Amelia  I  should  not  have  forbidden  the  banns. 

Even  the  persevering  Mr.  B and  the  too 

amorous  Lovelace  wxre,  in  spite  of  their  ab- 
errations, men  of  gentle  nature,  and  had  pos- 
sibilities of  greatness  and  tenderness  within 
them.  Yes,  I  cannot  doubt  that  Richardson 
drew  the  higher  type  of  man — and  that  in 
Grandison  he  has  done  what  has  seldom  or 
never  been  bettered. 


146       TPIROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 

Richardson  was  also  the  subtler  and  deeper 
writer  in  my  opinion.  He  concerns  liimself 
A\dth  fine  consistent  character-drawing,  and 
with  a  very  searching  analysis  of  the  human 
heart,  which  is  done  so  easily,  and  in  such  sim- 
ple English,  that  the  depth  and  truth  of  it 
only  come  upon  reflection.  He  condescends 
to  none  of  those  scuffles  and  buffetings  and 
pantomime  rallies  which  enliven,  but  cheapen, 
many  of  Fielding's  pages.  The  latter  has,  it 
may  be  granted,  a  broader  view  of  life.  He 
had  personal  acquaintance  of  circles  far  above, 
and  also  far  below,  any  which  the  douce  cit- 
izen, who  was  his  rival,  had  ever  been  able  or 
willing  to  explore.  His  pictures  of  low  Lon- 
don life,  the  prison  scenes  in  "Amelia,"  the 
thieves'  kitchens  in  "Jonathan  Wild,"  the 
sponging  houses  and  the  slums  are  as  vivid  and 
as  complete  as  those  of  his  friend  Hogarth — 
the  most  British  of  artists,  even  as  Fielding 
was  the  most  British  of  writers.  But  the 
greatest  and  most  permanent  facts  of  life  are 
to  be  found  in  the  smallest  circles.     Two  men 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  147 
and  a  woman  may  furnish  either  the  tragedian 
or  the  comedian  with  the  most  satisfying 
theme.  And  so,  although  his  range  was  Hm- 
ited,  Richardson  knew  very  clearly  and  very 
thoroughly  just  that  knowledge  which  was  es- 
sential for  his  purpose.  Pamela,  the  perfect 
woman  of  humble  life,  Clarissa  the  perfect 
lady,  Grandison  the  ideal  gentleman — these 
were  the  three  figures  on  which  he  lavished 
his  most  loving  art.  And  now,  after  one  hun- 
dred and  fifty  years,  I  do  not  know  where  we 
may  find  more  satisfying  types. 

He  was  prolix,  it  may  be  admitted,  but  who 
could  bear  to  have  him  cut?  He  loved  to 
sit  down  and  tell  you  just  all  about  it.  His 
use  of  letters  for  his  narratives  made  this  gos- 
sipy stjde  more  easy.  First  lie  writes  and  he 
tells  all  that  passed.  You  have  his  letter. 
She  at  the  same  time  ^vrites  to  her  friend,  and 
also  states  her  views.  This  also  you  see. 
The  friends  in  each  case  reply,  and  you  have 
the  advantage  of  their  comments  and  advice. 
You  really  do  know  all  about  it  before  you 


148  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
finish.  It  may  be  a  little  wearisome  at  first, 
if  you  have  been  accustomed  to  a  more 
hustling  style  with  fireworks  in  every  chapter. 
But  gradually  it  creates  an  atmosphere  in 
which  you  live,  and  you  come  to  know  these 
people,  with  their  characters  and  their  trou- 
bles, as  you  laiow  no  others  of  the  dream- 
folk  fiction.  Three  times  as  long  as  an  or- 
dinary book  no  doubt,  but  why  grudge  the 
time?  What  is  the  hurry.  Surely  it  is  bet- 
ter to  read  one  masterpiece  than  three  books 
which  will  leave  no  permanent  impression  on 
the  mind. 

It  was  all  attuned  to  the  sedate  life  of  that, 
the  last  of  the  quiet  centuries.  In  the  lonely 
country-house,  with  few  letters  and  fewer 
papers,  do  you  suppose  that  the  readers  ever 
complained  of  the  length  of  a  book,  or  could 
have  too  much  of  the  happy  Pamela  or  of  the 
unhappy  Clarissa?  It  is  only  under  extraor- 
dinary circumstances  that  one  can  now  get 
into  that  receptive  frame  of  mind  which  was 
normal  then.     Such  an  occasion  is  recorded  by 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  149 
JNIacaulay,  when  he  tells  how  in  some  Indian 
hill  station,  where  books  were  rare,  he  let  loose 
a  copy  of  "Clarissa."  The  effect  was  what 
might  have  been  expected.  Richardson  in  a 
suitable  environment  went  through  the  com- 
munity like  a  mild  fever.  They  lived  him, 
and  dreamed  him,  until  the  whole  episode 
passed  into  literary  history,  never  to  be  for- 
gotten by  those  who  experienced  it.  It  is  tuned 
for  every  ear.  That  beautiful  style  is  so  cor- 
rect and  yet  so  simple  that  there  is  no  page 
which  a  scholar  may  not  applaud  nor  a  serv- 
ant-maid understand. 

Of  course,  there  are  obvious  disadvantages 
to  the  tale  which  is  told  in  letters.  Scott  re- 
verted to  it  in  "Guy  Mannering,"  and  there 
are  other  conspicuous  successes,  but  vividness 
is  always  gained  at  the  expense  of  a  strain 
upon  the  reader's  good-nature  and  credulity. 
One  feels  that  these  constant  details,  these 
long  conversations,  could  not  possibly  have 
been  recorded  in  such  a  fashion.  The  indig- 
nant  and   dishevelled   heroine    could   not    sit 


150  THROUGH  THE  IMAGIC  DOOR 
down  and  record  licr  escape  M-ith  such  cool 
minuteness  of  description.  Richardson  does 
it  as  well  as  it  could  be  done,  but  it  remains 
intrinsically  faulty.  Fielding,  using  the  third 
person,  broke  all  the  fetters  which  bound  his 
rival,  and  gave  a  freedom  and  personal  au- 
thority to  the  novel  which  it  had  never  before 
enjoyed.     There  at  least  he  is  the  master. 

And  yet,  on  the  whole,  my  balance  inclines 
towards  Richardson,  though  I  dare  say  I  am 
one  in  a  hundred  in  thinking  so.  First  of 
all,  beyond  anything  I  may  have  already 
urged,  he  had  the  supreme  credit  of  having 
been  the  first.  Surely  the  originator  should 
have  a  higher  place  than  the  imitator,  even  if 
in  imitating  he  should  also  improve  and  am- 
plify. It  is  Richardson  and  not  Fielding  who 
is  the  father  of  the  English  novel,  the  man 
who  first  saw  that  without  romantic  gallan- 
try, and  without  bizarre  imaginings,  enthrall- 
ing stories  may  be  made  from  everyday  life, 
told  in  everj^day  language.  This  was  his 
great  new  departure.     So  entirely  was  Field- 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  151 
ing  his  imitator,  or  rather  perhaps  his  paro- 
dist, that  with  supreme  audacity  (some  would 
say  brazen  impudence)  he  used  poor  Richard- 
son's own  characters,  taken  from  "Pamela" 
in  his  own  first  novel,  "Joseph  Andrews,"  and 
used  them  too  for  the  unkind  purpose  of  rid- 
iculing them.  As  a  matter  of  literary  ethics, 
it  is  as  if  Thackeray  wrote  a  novel  bringing  in 
Pickwick  and  Sam  Weller  in  order  to  show 
what  faulty  characters  these  were.  It  is  no 
wonder  that  even  the  gentle  little  printer  grew 
wrath,  and  alluded  to  his  rival  as  a  somewhat 
unscrupulous  man. 

And  then  there  is  the  vexed  question  of 
morals.  Surely  in  talking  of  this  also,  there 
is  a  good  deal  of  inverted  cant  among  a  cer- 
tain class  of  critics.  The  inference  appears 
to  be  that  there  is  some  subtle  connection  be- 
tween immorality  and  art,  as  if  the  handling 
of  the  lewd,  or  the  depicting  of  it,  were  in 
some  sort  the  hallmark  of  the  true  artist.  It 
is  not  difficult  to  handle  or  depict.  On  the 
contrary,  it  is  so  easy,  and  so  essentially  dra- 


152  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
matic  in  many  of  its  forms,  that  the  tempta- 
tion to  employ  it  is  ever  present.  It  is  the 
easiest  and  cheapest  of  all  methods  of  creating 
a  spurious  eifect.  The  difficulty  does  not  lie 
in  doing  it.  The  difficulty  lies  in  avoiding  it. 
But  one  tries  to  avoid  it  because  on  the  face 
of  it  there  is  no  reason  why  a  writer  should 
cease  to  be  a  gentleman,  or  that  he  should 
write  for  a  woman's  eyes  that  which  he  would 
be  justly  knocked  down  for  having  said  in  a 
woman's  ears.  But  "you  must  draw  the 
world  as  it  is."  Why  must  you?  Surely  it  is 
just  in  selection  and  restraint  that  the  artist 
is  shown.  It  is  true  that  in  a  coarser  age 
great  writers  heeded  no  restrictions,  but  life 
itself  had  fewer  restrictions  then.  We  are 
of  our  own  age,  and  must  live  up  to  it. 

But  must  these  sides  of  life  be  absolutely 
excluded?  By  no  means.  Our  decency  need 
not  weaken  into  prudery.  It  all  lies  in  the 
spirit  in  which  it  is  done.  ISTo  one  who  wished 
to  lecture  on  these  various  spirits  could  preach 
on  a  better  text  than  these  three  great  rivals, 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  153 
Richardson,  Fielding,  and  Smollett.  It  is 
possible  to  draw  vice  with  some  freedom  for 
the  purpose  of  condemning  it.  Such  a  writer 
is  a  moralist,  and  there  is  no  better  example 
than  Richardson.  Again,  it  is  possible  to 
draw  vice  with  neither  sympathy  nor  disap- 
probation, but  simply  as  a  fact  which  is  there. 
Such  a  writer  is  a  realist,  and  such  was  Field- 
ing. Once  more,  it  is  possible  to  draw  vice 
in  order  to  extract  amusement  from  it.  Such 
a  man  is  a  coarse  humorist,  and  such  was 
Smollett.  Lastly,  it  is  possible  to  draw  vice 
in  order  to  show  sympathy  with  it.  Such  a 
man  is  a  wicked  man,  and  there  were  many 
among  the  writers  of  the  Restoration.  But 
of  all  reasons  that  exist  for  treating  this  side 
of  life,  Richardson's  were  the  best,  and  no- 
where do  we  find  it  more  deftly  done. 

Apart  from  his  writings,  there  must  have 
been  something  very  noble  about  Fielding  as 
a  man.  He  was  a  better  hero  than  any  that 
he  drew.  Alone  he  accepted  the  task  of 
cleansing  London,  at  that  time  the  most  dan- 


154  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
gerous  and  lawless  of  European  capitals. 
Hogarth's  pictures  give  some  notion  of  it  in 
the  pre-Fiekling  day,  the  low  roughs,  the 
high-born  bullies,  the  drunkenness,  the  villain- 
ies, the  thieves'  kitchens  with  their  riverside 
trapdoors,  down  which  the  body  is  thrust. 
This  was  the  Augean  stable  which  had  to  be 
cleaned,  and  poor  Hercules  was  weak  and  frail 
and  physically  more  fitted  for  a  sick-room 
than  for  such  a  task.  It  cost  him  his  life,  for 
he  died  at  47,  worn  out  with  his  own  exertions. 
It  might  well  have  cost  him  his  life  in  more 
dramatic  fashion,  for  he  had  become  a  marked 
man  to  the  criminal  classes,  and  he  headed  his 
own  search-parties,  when,  on  the  information 
of  some  bribed  rascal,  a  new  den  of  villainy 
was  exposed.  But  he  carried  his  point.  In 
little  more  than  a  year  the  thing  was  done, 
and  London  turned  from  the  most  rowdy  to 
what  it  has  ever  since  remained,  the  most  law- 
abiding  of  European  capitals.  Has  any  man 
ever  left  a  finer  monument  behind  him? 

If  you  want  the  real  human  Fielding  you 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  155 
will  find  him  not  in  the  novels,  where  his  real 
kindliness  is  too  often  veiled  by  a  mock  cyni- 
cism, but  in  his  "Diary  of  his  Voyage  to  Lis- 
bon." He  knew  that  his  health  was  irretriev- 
abl}^  ruined  and  that  his  years  were  numbered. 
Those  are  the  days  when  one  sees  a  man  as  he 
is,  when  he  has  no  longer  a  motive  for  affecta- 
tion or  pretense  in  the  immediate  presence  of 
the  most  tremendous  of  all  realities.  Yet,  sit- 
ting in  the  shadow  of  death.  Fielding  dis- 
pla)^ed  a  quiet,  gentle  courage  and  constancy 
of  mind,  which  show  how  splendid  a  nature 
had  been  shrouded  by  his  earlier  frailties. 

Just  one  word  upon  another  eighteenth-cen- 
tury novel  before  I  finish  this  somewhat  didac- 
tic chat.  You  will  admit  that  I  have  never 
prosed  so  much  before,  but  the  period  and  the 
subject  seem  to  encourage  it.  I  skip  Sterne, 
for  I  have  no  great  sympathy  with  his  finicky 
methods.  And  I  skip  JMiss  Burney's  novels, 
as  being  feminine  reflections  of  the  great  mas- 
ters who  had  just  preceded  her.  But  Gold- 
smith's "Vicar  of  Wakefield"  surely  deserves 


156  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
one  paragraph  to  itself.  There  is  a  book 
which  is  tinged  throughout,  as  was  all  Gold- 
smith's work,  with  a  beautiful  nature.  No 
one  who  had  not  a  fine  heart  could  have  writ- 
ten it,  just  as  no  one  without  a  fine  heart  could 
have  written  "The  Deserted  Village."  How 
strange  it  is  to  think  of  old  Johnson  patroniz- 
ing or  snubbing  the  shrinking  Irishman,  when 
both  in  poetry,  in  fiction,  and  in  the  drama  the 
latter  has  proved  himself  far  the  greater  man. 
But  here  is  an  object-lesson  of  how  the  facts 
of  life  may  be  treated  without  offense.  Noth- 
ing is  shirked.  It  is  all  faced  and  duly  re- 
corded. Yet  if  I  wished  to  set  before  the  sen- 
sitive mind  of  a  young  girl  a  book  which  would 
prepare  her  for  life  without  in  any  way  con- 
taminating her  delicacy  of  feeling,  there  is 
no  book  which  I  should  choose  so  readily  as 
"The  Vicar  of  Wakefield." 

So  much  for  the  eighteenth-centurj'-  novel- 
ists. They  have  a  shelf  of  their  own  in  the  case, 
and  a  corner  of  their  own  in  my  brain.     For 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  157 
years  you  may  never  think  of  them,  and  then 
suddenly  some  stray  word  or  train  of  thought 
leads  straight  to  them,  and  you  look  at  them 
and  love  them,  and  rejoice  that  you  know 
them.  But  let  us  pass  to  something  which 
may  interest  you  more. 

If  statistics  could  be  taken  in  the  various 
free  libraries  of  the  kingdom  to  prove  the  com- 
parative popularity  of  different  novelists  with 
the  public,  I  think  that  it  is  quite  certain  that 
Mr.  George  Meredith  would  come  out  very 
low  indeed.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  a  number 
of  authors  were  convened  to  determine  which 
of  their  fellow-craftsmen  they  considered  the 
greatest  and  the  most  stimulating  to  their  own 
minds,  I  am  equally  confident  that  INIr.  Mere- 
dith would  have  a  vast  preponderance  of  votes. 
Indeed,  his  only  conceivable  rival  would  be 
Mr.  Hardy.  It  becomes  an  interesting  study, 
therefore,  why  there  should  be  such  a  diver- 
gence of  opinion  as  to  his  merits,  and  what  the 
qualities    are   which   have   repelled   so   many 


158       THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
readers,  and  yet  have  attracted  those  whose 
opinion  must  be   allowed  to  have   a   special 
weight. 

The  most  obvious  reason  is  his  complete 
unconventionality.  The  public  read  to  be 
amused.  The  novelist  reads  to  have  new  light 
thrown  upon  his  art.  To  read  Meredith  is 
not  a  mere  amusement ;  it  is  an  intellectual  ex- 
ercise, a  kind  of  mental  dumb-bell  with  which 
you  develop  your  thinking  powers.  Your 
mind  is  in  a  state  of  tension  the  whole  time 
that  you  are  reading  him. 

If  you  will  follow  my  nose  as  the  sports- 
man follows  that  of  his  pointer,  you  will  ob- 
serve that  these  remarks  are  excited  by  the 
presence  of  my  beloved  "Richard  Feverel," 
which  lurks  in  yonder  corner.  What  a  great 
book  it  is,  how  wise  and  how  witty!  Others 
of  the  master's  novels  may  be  more  character- 
istic or  more  profound,  but  for  my  own  part 
it  is  the  one  which  I  would  always  present  to 
the  new-comer  who  had  not  yet  come  under  the 
influence.     I  think  that  I  should  put  it  third 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  159 
after  "Vanity  Fair"  and  "The  Cloister  and 
the  Hearth"  if  I  had  to  name  the  three  novels 
which  I  admire  most  in  the  Victorian  era. 
The  book  was  published,  I  believe,  in  1859, 
and  it  is  ahnost  incredible,  and  says  little  for 
the  discrimination  of  critics  or  public,  that  it 
was  nearly  twenty  years  before  a  second  edi- 
tion was  needed. 

But  there  are  never  effects  without  causes, 
however  inadequate  the  cause  may  be.  What 
was  it  that  stood  in  the  way  of  the  book's  suc- 
cess? Undoubtedly  it  was  the  style.  And 
yet  it  is  subdued  and  tempered  here  with  little 
of  the  luxuriance  and  exuberance  which  it  at- 
tained in  the  later  works.  But  it  was  an  inno- 
vation, and  it  stalled  off  both  the  public  and 
the  critics.  They  regarded  it,  no  doubt,  as  an 
affectation,  as  Carlyle's  had  been  considered 
twenty  years  before,  forgetting  that  in  the  case 
of  an  original  genius  style  is  an  organic 
thing,  part  of  the  man  as  much  as  the  color 
of  his  eyes.  It  is  not,  to  quote  Carlyle,  a 
shirt  to  be  taken  on  and  off  at  pleasure,  but 


160  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
a  skin,  eternally  fixed.  And  this  strange, 
powerful  style,  how  is  it  to  be  described? 
Best,  perhaps,  in  his  own  strong  words,  when 
he  spoke  of  Carlyle  with  perhaps  the  arriere 
pensce  that  the  words  would  apply  as  strongly 
to  himself. 

"His  favorite  author,"  says  he,  "was  one 
writing  on  heroes  in  a  style  resembling  either 
early  architecture  or  utter  dilapidation,  so 
loose  and  rough  it  seemed.  A  wind-in-the- 
orchard  style  that  tumbled  down  here  and 
there  an  appreciable  fruit  with  uncouth  blus- 
ter, sentences  without  commencements  run- 
ning to  abrupt  endings  and  smoke,  like  waves 
against  a  sea-wall,  learned  dictionary  words 
giving  a  hand  to  street  slang,  and  accents  fall- 
ing on  them  haphazard,  like  slant  rays  from 
driving  clouds;  all  the  pages  in  a  breeze,  the 
whole  book  producing  a  kind  of  electrical  agi- 
tation in  the  mind  and  joints." 

What  a  wonderful  description  and  exam- 
ple of  style !  And  how  vivid  is  the  impression 
left  by  such  expressions  as  "all  the  pages  in 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  161 
a  breeze."  As  a  comment  on  Carlyle,  and  as 
a  sample  of  Meredith,  the  j)assage  is  equally 
perfect. 

Well,  "Richard  Feverel"  has  come  into  its 
own  at  last.  I  confess  to  having  a  strong  be- 
lief in  the  critical  discernment  of  the  public. 
I  do  not  think  good  work  is  often  overlooked. 
Literature,  like  water,  finds  its  true  level. 
Opinion  is  slow  to  form,  but  it  sets  true  at  last. 
I  am  sure  that  if  the  critics  were  to  unite  to 
praise  a  bad  book  or  to  damn  a  good  one  they 
could  (and  continually  do)  have  a  five-year  in- 
fluence, but  it  would  in  no  wise  affect  the  final 
result.  Sheridan  said  that  if  all  the  fleas  in 
his  bed  had  been  unanimous,  they  could  have 
pushed  him  out  of  it.  I  do  not  think  that  any 
unanimity  of  critics  has  ever  pushed  a  good 
book  out  of  literature. 

Among  the  minor  excellences  of  "Richard 
Feverel" — excuse  the  prolixity  of  an  enthu- 
siast— are  the  scattered  aphorisms  which  are 
worthy  of  a  place  among  our  British  proverbs. 
What    could    be    more    exquisite    than    this, 


162  TPIROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
^'Who  rises  from  prayer  a  better  man  his 
prayer  is  answered";  or  this,  "Expediency  is 
man's  wisdom.  Doing  right  is  God's";  or, 
"All  great  thoughts  come  from  the  heart"? 
Good  are  the  words  "The  coward  amongst  us 
is  he  who  sneers  at  the  failings  of  humanity," 
and  a  healthy  optimism  rings  in  the  phrase 
"There  is  for  the  mind  but  one  grasp  of  hap- 
piness; from  that  uppermost  pinnacle  of  wis- 
dom whence  we  see  that  this  world  is  well  de- 
signed." In  more  playful  mood  is  "Woman 
is  the  last  thing  which  will  be  civilized  by 
man."  Let  us  hurry  away  abruptly,  for  he 
who  starts  quotation  from  "Richard  Feverel" 
is  lost. 

He  has,  as  you  see,  a  goodly  line  of  his 
brothers  beside  him.  There  are  the  Italian 
ones,  "Sandra  Belloni,"  and  "Vittoria";  there 
is  "Rhoda  Fleming,"  which  carried  Stevenson 
off  his  critical  feet;  "Beauchamp's  Career," 
too,  dealing  with  obsolete  politics.  No  great 
writer  should  spend  himself  upon  a  temporary 
theme.     It  is  like  the  beauty  who  is  painted 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  163 
in  some  passing  fashion  of  gown.  She  tends 
to  become  obsolete  along  with  her  frame. 
Here  also  is  the  dainty  "Diana,"  the  egoist 
with  immortal  Willoughby  Pattern,  eternal 
type  of  masculine  selfishness,  and  "Harry 
Richmond,"  the  first  chapters  of  which  are,  in 
my  opinion,  among  the  finest  pieces  of  narra- 
tive prose  in  the  language.  That  great  mind 
would  have  worked  in  any  form  which  his  age 
had  favored.  He  is  a  novelist  by  accident. 
As  an  Elizabethan  he  would  have  been  a  great 
dramatist;  under  Queen  Anne  a  great  essay- 
ist. But  whatever  medium  he  worked  in,  he 
must  equally  have  thrown  the  image  of  a  great 
brain  and  a  great  soul. 


VIII 

IWe  have  left  our  eighteenth-century  novel- 
ists— Fielding,  Richardson,  and  Smollett — 
safely  beliind  us,  with  all  their  solidity  and 
their  audacity,  their  sincerity,  and  their  coarse- 
ness of  fiber.  They  have  brought  us,  as  you 
perceive,  to  the  end  of  the  shelf.  What,  not 
wearied?  Ready  for  yet  another?  Let  us 
run  down  this  next  row,  then,  and  I  will  tell 
you  a  few  things  which  may  be  of  interest, 
though  they  will  be  dull  enough  if  you  have 
not  been  born  with  that  love  of  books  in  your 
heart  which  is  among  the  choicest  gifts  of  the 
gods.  If  that  is  wanting,  then  one  might  as 
well  play  music  to  the  deaf,  or  walk  round 
the  Academy  with  the  color-blind,  as  appeal 
to  the  book-sense  of  an  unfortunate  who  has 
it  not. 

There  is  this  old  brown  volume  in  the  cor- 
164. 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  165 
ner.  How  it  got  there  I  cannot  imagine, 
for  it  is  one  of  those  which  I  bought  for  three- 
pence out  of  the  remnant  box  in  Edinburgh, 
and  its  weather-beaten  comrades  are  up  yon- 
der in  the  back  gallery,  while  this  one  has  el- 
bowed its  way  among  the  quality  in  the  stalls. 
But  it  is  worth  a  word  or  two.  Take  it  out 
and  handle  it!  See  how  swarthy  it  is,  how 
squat,  with  how  bullet-proof  a  cover  of  scal- 
ing leather.  Now  open  the  fly-leaf  ^''EoC 
libris  Guilielmi  Whyte.  1672"  in  faded  yel- 
low ink.  I  wonder  who  William  Whyte  may 
have  been,  and  what  he  did  upon  earth  in  the 
reign  of  the  merry  monarch.  A  prag- 
matical seventeenth-century  lawyer,  I  should 
judge,  by  that  hard,  angular  writing.  The 
date  of  issue  is  1642,  so  it  was  printed  just 
about  the  time  when  the  Pilgrim  Fathers 
were  settling  down  into  their  new  American 
home,  and  the  first  Charles's  head  was  still 
firm  upon  his  shoulders,  though  a  little  puz- 
zled, no  doubt,  at  what  was  going  around  it. 
The  book  is  in  Latin — though  Cicero  might 


'&' 


166       THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 

not  have  admitted  it — and  it  treats  of  the  laws 

of  warfare. 

I  picture  some  pedantic  Dugald  Dalgetty 
bearing  it  about  under  his  buff  coat,  or  down 
in  his  holster,  and  turning  up  the  reference 
for  every  fresh  emergency  which  occurred. 
"Hullo!  here's  a  well!"  says  he.  "I  wonder 
if  I  may  poison  it?"  Out  comes  the  book, 
and  he  runs  a  dirty  forefinger  down  the  index. 
^'Ob  fas  est  aquam  liostis  venere''  etc.  "Tut, 
tut,  it's  not  allowed.  But  here  are  some  of 
the  enemy  in  a  barn?  What  about  that?" 
"Oh  fas  est  Tiostem  incendio/'  etc.  "Yes;  he 
says  we  may.  Quick,  Ambrose,  up  with 
the  straw  and  the  tinder  box."  Warfare  was 
no  child's  play  about  the  time  when  Tilly 
sacked  Magdeburg,  and  Cromwell  turned  his 
hand  from  the  mash  tub  to  the  sword.  It 
might  not  be  much  better  now  in  a  long  cam- 
paign, when  men  were  hardened  and  embit- 
tered. Many  of  these  laws  are  unrepealed, 
and  it  is  less  than  a  century  since  highly  dis- 
ciplined British  troops  claimed  their  dreadful 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  167 
rights  at  Badajos  and  Rodrigo.  Recent  Eu- 
ropean wars  have  been  so  short  that  discipHne 
and  humanity  have  not  had  time  to  go  to 
pieces,  but  a  long  war  would  show  that  man  is 
ever  the  same,  and  that  civilization  is  the  thin- 
nest of  veneers. 

Now  3^ou  see  that  whole  row  of  books  which 
takes  you  at  one  sweep  nearly  across  the  shelf? 
I  am  rather  proud  of  those,  for  they  are  my 
collection  of  Napoleonic  military  memoirs. 
There  is  a  story  told  of  an  illiterate  million- 
aire who  gave  a  wholesale  dealer  an  order  for 
a  copy  of  all  books  in  any  language  treating 
of  any  aspect  of  Napoleon's  career.  He 
thought  it  would  fill  a  case  in  his  library.  He 
was  somewhat  taken  aback,  however,  when  in 
a  few  weeks  he  received  a  message  from  the 
dealer  that  he  had  got  40,000  volumes,  and 
awaited  instructions  as  to  whether  he  should 
send  them  on  as  an  instalment,  or  wait  for  a 
complete  set.  The  figures  may  not  be  exact, 
but  at  least  they  bring  home  the  impossibility 
of  exhausting  the  subject,  and  the  danger  of 


168  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
losing  one's  self  for  years  in  a  huge  labyrinth 
of  reading,  which  may  end  by  leaving  no  very 
definite  impression  upon  your  mind.  But 
one  might,  perhaps,  take  a  corner  of  it,  as  I 
have  done  here  in  the  military  memoirs,  and 
there  one  might  hope  to  get  some  finality. 

Here  is  Marbot  at  this  end — the  first  of  all 
soldier  books  in  the  world.  This  is  the  com- 
plete three-volume  French  edition,  with  red 
and  gold  cover,  smart  and  debonnaire  like 
its  author.  Here  he  is  in  one  frontispiece 
with  his  pleasant,  round,  boyish  face,  as  a 
Captain  of  his  beloved  Chasseurs.  And  here 
in  the  other  is  the  grizzled  old  bull-dog  as  a 
full  general,  looking  as  full  of  fight  as  ever. 
It  was  a  real  blow  to  me  when  some  one  began 
to  throw  doubts  upon  the  authenticity  of  Mar- 
bot's  memoirs.  Homer  may  be  dissolved  into 
a  crowd  of  skin-clad  bards.  Even  Shakes- 
peare may  be  jostled  in  his  throne  of  honor 
by  plausible  Baconians;  but  the  human,  the 
gallant,  the  inimitable  Marbot!  His  book  is 
that  which  gives  us  the  best  picture  by  far  of 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  169 
the  Napoleonic  soldiers,  and  to  me  they  are 
even  more  interesting  than  their  great  leader, 
though  his  must  ever  be  the  most  singular 
figure  in  history.  But  those  soldiers,  with 
their  hugh  shakoes,  their  hairy  knapsacks,  and 
their  hearts  of  steel — ^what  men  they  were! 
And  what  a  latent  power  there  must  be  in  this 
French  nation  which  could  go  on  pouring  out 
the  blood  of  its  sons  for  twenty-three  years 
with  hardly  a  pause! 

It  took  all  that  time  to  work  off  the  hot 
ferment  which  the  Revolution  had  left  in 
men's  veins.  And  they  were  not  exhausted, 
for  the  very  last  fight  which  the  French 
fought  was  the  finest  of  all.  Proud  as  we  are 
of  our  infantry  at  Waterloo,  it  was  really 
with  the  French  cavalry  that  the  greenest  lau- 
rels of  that  great  epic  rested.  They  got  the 
better  of  our  own  cavalrj^  they  took  our  guns 
again  and  again,  they  swept  a  large  portion  of 
our  allies  from  the  field,  and  finally  they  rode 
off  unbroken,  and  as  full  of  fight  as  ever. 
Read  Gronow's  "Memoirs,"  that  chatty  little 


170  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
yellow  volume  yonder  which  brings  all  that 
age  back  to  us  more  vividly  than  any  more 
pretentious  work,  and  you  will  find  the  chival- 
rous admiration  which  our  officers  expressed 
at  the  fine  performance  of  the  French  horse- 
men. 

It  must  be  admitted  that,  looking  back  upon 
history,  we  have  not  always  been  good  allies, 
nor  yet  generous,  co-partners  in  the  battle- 
field. The  first  is  the  fault  of  our  politics, 
where  one  party  rejoices  to  break  what  the 
other  has  bound.  The  makers  of  the  Treaty 
are  staunch  enough,  as  the  Tories  were  under 
Pitt  and  Castlereagh,  or  the  Whigs  at  the 
time  of  Queen  Anne,  but  sooner  or  later  the 
others  must  come  in.  At  the  end  of  the  Marl- 
borough wars  we  suddenly  vamped  up  a  peace 
and  left  our  allies  in  the  lurch,  on  account  of 
a  change  in  domestic  politics.  We  did  the 
same  with  Frederick  the  Great,  and  would 
have  done  it  in  the  Napoleonic  days  if  Fox 
could  have  controlled  the  country.  And  as 
to  our  partners  of  the  battlefield,  how  little 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  171 
we  have  ever  said  that  is  hearty  as  to  tilie 
splendid  staunchness  of  the  Prussians  at 
Waterloo.  You  have  to  read  the  Frenchman, 
Houssaye,  to  get  a  central  view  and  to  under- 
stand the  part  they  played.  Think  of  old 
Blucher,  seventy  years  old,  and  ridden  over  by 
a  regiment  of  charging  cavalry  the  day  be- 
fore, yet  swearing  that  he  would  come  to  Wel- 
lington if  he  had  to  be  strapped  to  his  horse. 
He  nobly  redeemed  his  promise. 

The  loss  of  the  Prussians  at  Waterloo  was 
not  far  short  of  our  own.  You  would  not 
know  it,  to  read  our  historians.  And  then  the 
abuse  of  our  Belgian  allies  has  been  overdone. 
Some  of  them  fought  splendidly,  and  one 
brigade  of  infantry  had  a  share  in  the  critical 
instant  when  the  battle  was  turned.  This 
also  you  would  not  learn  from  British  sources. 
Look  at  our  Portuguese  allies  also!  They 
trained  into  magnificent  troops,  and  one  of 
Wellington's  earnest  desires  was  to  have  ten 
thousand  of  them  for  his  Waterloo  campaign. 
It  was  a  Portuguese  who  first  topped  the  ram- 


172  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
part  of  Badajos.  They  have  never  had  their 
due  credit,  nor  have  the  Spaniards  either,  for, 
though  often  defeated,  it  was  their  uncon- 
querable pertinacity  which  played  a  great 
part  in  the  struggle.  No ;  I  do  not  think  that 
we  are  very  amiable  partners,  but  I  suppose 
that  all  national  history  may  be  open  to  a  sim- 
ilar charge. 

It  must  be  confessed  that  Marbot's  details 
are  occasionally  a  little  hard  to  believe.  Never 
in  the  pages  of  Lever  has  there  been  such  a 
series  of  hairbreadth  escapes  and  dare-devil 
exploits.  Surely  he  stretched  it  a  little  some- 
times. You  may  remember  his  adventure  at 
Eylau — I  think  it  was  Eylau — how  a  cannon- 
ball,  striking  the  top  of  his  helmet,  paralyzed 
him  by  the  concussion  of  his  spine;  and  how, 
on  a  Russian  officer  running  forward  to  cut 
him  down,  his  horse  bit  the  man's  face  nearly 
off.  This  was  the  famous  charger  which  sav- 
aged everything  until  Marbot,  having  bought 
it  for  next  to  nothing,  cured  it  by  thrusting 
a  boiling  leg  of  mutton  into  its  mouth  when 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  173 
it  tried  to  bite  him.  It  certainly  does  need 
a  robust  faith  to  get  over  these  incidents. 
And  yet,  when  one  reflects  ujoon  the  hundreds 
of  battles  and  skirmishes  which  a  Napoleonic 
officer  must  have  endured — how  they  must 
have  been  the  uninterrupted  routine  of  his 
life  from  the  first  dark  hair  upon  his  lip  to  the 
first  gray  one  upon  his  head,  it  is  presumptu- 
ous to  say  what  may  or  may  not  have  been 
possible  in  such  unparalleled  careers.  At  any 
rate,  be  it  fact  or  fiction — fact  it  is,  in  my 
opinion,  with  some  artistic  touching  up  of  the 
high  lights — there  are  few  books  which  I 
could  not  spare  from  my  shelves  better  than 
the  memoirs  of  the  gallant  Marbot. 

I  dwell  upon  tliis  particular  book  because 
it  is  the  best;  but  take  the  whole  line,  and 
there  is  not  one  which  is  not  full  of  interest. 
Marbot  gives  you  the  point  of  view  of  the 
officer.  So  does  De  Segfur  and  De  Fezensac 
and  Colonel  Gonville,  each  in  some  different 
branch  of  the  service.  But  some  are  from  the 
pens  of  the  men  in  the  ranks,  and  they  are 


174  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
even  more  graphic  than  the  others.  Here,  for 
example,  are  the  papers  of  good  old  Cogniet, 
who  was  a  grenadier  of  the  Guard,  and  could 
neither  read  nor  write  until  after  the  great 
wars  were  over.  A  tougher  soldier  never 
went  into  battle.  Here  is  Sergeant  Bour- 
gogne,  also  with  his  dreadful  account  of  that 
nightmare  campaign  in  Russia,  and  the  gal- 
lant Chevillet,  trumpeter  of  Chasseurs,  with 
his  matter-of-fact  account  of  all  that  he  saw, 
where  the  daily  "combat"  is  sandwiched  in  be- 
twixt the  real  business  of  the  day,  which  was 
foraging  for  his  frugal  breakfast  and  supper. 
There  is  no  better  writing,  and  no  easier  read- 
ing, than  the  records  of  these  men  of  action. 
A  Briton  cannot  help  asking  himself,  as  he 
realizes  what  men  these  were,  what  would  have 
happened  if  150,000  Cogniets  and  Bour- 
gognes,  with  Marbots  to  lead  them,  and  the 
great  captain  of  all  time  in  the  prime  of  his 
vigor  at  their  head,  had  made  their  landing 
in  Kent?  For  months  it  was  touch-and-go. 
A  single  naval  slip  which  left  the  Channel 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  175 
clear  would  have  been  followed  by  an  em- 
barkation from  Boulogne,  which  had  been 
brought  by  constant  practice  to  so  incredibly 
fine  a  point  that  the  last  horse  was  aboard 
within  two  hours  of  the  start.  Any  evening 
might  have  seen  the  whole  host  upon  the 
Pevensey  Flats.  What  then?  We  know 
what  Humbert  did  with  a  handful  of  men  in 
Ireland,  and  the  story  is  not  reassuring.  Con- 
quest, of  course,  is  unthinkable.  The  Avorld 
in  arms  could  not  do  that.  But  Napoleon 
never  thought  of  the  conquest  of  Britain.  He 
has  expressly  disclaimed  it.  What  he  did 
contemplate  was  a  gigantic  raid  in  which  he 
would  do  so  much  damage  that  for  years  to 
come  England  would  be  occupied  at  home  in 
picking  up  the  pieces,  Instead  of  having  en- 
ergy to  spend  abroad  in  thwarting  his  Con- 
tinental plans. 

Portsmouth,  Plymouth,  and  Sheerness  in 
flames,  with  London  either  leveled  to  the 
ground,  or  ransomed  at  his  own  figure — that 
was  a  more  feasible  programme.     Then,  with 


176  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
the  united  fleets  of  conquered  Europe  at 
his  back,  enormous  armies  and  an  inexhausti- 
ble treasury,  swollen  with  the  ransom  of  Brit- 
ain, he  could  turn  to  that  conquest  of  Amer- 
ica which  w^ould  win  back  the  old  colonies  of 
France  and  leave  him  master  of  the  world. 
If  the  worst  happened  and  he  had  met  his 
Waterloo  upon  the  South  Downs,  he  would 
have  done  again  what  he  did  in  Efgypt  and 
once  more  in  Russia:  hurried  back  to  France 
in  a  swift  vessel,  and  still  have  force  enough 
to  hold  his  own  upon  the  Continent.  It 
would,  no  doubt,  have  been  a  big  stake  to  lay 
upon  the  table — 150,000  of  his  best — but  he 
could  play  again  if  he  lost;  wMe,  if  he  won, 
he  cleared  the  board.  A  fine  game — if  little 
Nelson  had  not  stopped  it,  and  with  one  blow 
fixed  the  edge  of  salt  water  as  the  limit  of 
Napoleon's  power. 

There's  the  cast  of  a  medal  on  the  top  of 
that  cabinet  which  will  bring  it  all  close  home 
to  you.  It  is  taken  from  the  die  of  the  medal 
which  Napoleon  had  arranged  to  issue  on  the 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  177 
day  that  he  reached  London.  It  serves,  at  any 
rate,  to  show  that  his  great  muster  was  not  a 
bkiff ,  but  that  he  really  did  mean  serious  busi- 
ness. On  one  side  is  his  head.  On  the  other 
France  is  engaged  in  strangling  and  throwing 
to  earth  a  curious  fish-tailed  creature,  which 
stands  for  perfidious  Albion.  "Frappe  a 
Londres"  is  printed  on  one  part  of  it,  and 
"La  Descente  dans  Angleterre"  upon  an- 
other. Struck  to  commemorate  a  conquest, 
it  remains  now  as  a  souvenir  of  a  fiasco.  But 
it  was  a  close  call. 

By  the  way,  talking  of  Napoleon's  flight 
from  Egypt,  did  j^ou  ever  see  a  curious  little 
book  called,  if  I  remember  right,  "Intercepted 
Letters?"  No;  I  have  no  copy  upon  this 
shelf,  but  a  friend  is  more  fortunate.  It 
shows  the  almost  incredible  hatred  which  ex- 
isted at  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century 
between  the  two  nations,  descending  even  to 
the  most  petty  personal  annoyance.  On  this 
occasion  the  British  Government  intercepted 
a  mail-bag  of  letters   coming   from   French 


178  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
officers  in  Egyj^t  to  their  friends  at  home,  and 
they  either  pubHshed  them,  or  at  least  allowed 
them  to  be  j)ublished,  in  the  hope,  no  doubt,  of 
causing  domestic  complications.  Was  ever  a 
more  despicable  action  ?  But  who  knows  what 
other  injuries  had  been  inflicted  to  draw  forth 
such  a  retaliation?  I  have  myself  seen  a 
burned  and  mutilated  British  mail  lying  where 
De  Wet  had  left  it ;  but  suppose  the  refinement 
of  his  vengeance  had  gone  so  far  as  to  publish 
it,  what  a  thunder-bolt  it  might  have  been! 

As  to  the  French  officers,  I  have  read  their 
letters,  though  even  after  a  century  one  had  a 
feeling  of  guilt  when  one  did  so.  But,  on  the 
whole,  they  are  a  credit  to  the  writers,  and  give 
the  impression  of  a  noble  and  chivalrous  set  of 
men.  Whether  they  were  all  addressed  to  the 
right  people  is  another  matter,  and  therein  lay 
the  poisoned  sting  of  this  most  un-British 
affair.  As  to  the  monstrous  things  which  were 
done  upon  the  other  side,  remember  the  arrest 
of  all  the  poor  British  tourists  and  commer- 
cials who  chanced  to  be  in  France  when  the  war 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  179 
was  renewed  in  1803.  They  had  run  over  in 
all  trust  and  confidence  for  a  little  outing  and 
change  of  air.  They  certainly  got  it,  for  Na- 
poleon's steel  grip  fell  upon  them  and  they 
rejoined  their  families  in  1814.  He  must  have 
had  a  heart  of  adamant  and  a  will  of  iron. 
Look  at  his  conduct  over  the  naval  prisoners. 
The  natural  proceeding  would  have  been  to 
exchange  them.  For  some  reason  he  did  not 
think  it  good  policy  to  do  so.  All  representa- 
tions from  the  British  Government  were  set 
aside,  save  in  the  case  of  the  higher  officers. 
Hence  the  miseries  of  the  hulks  and  the  dread- 
ful prison  barracks  in  England.  Hence  also 
the  unhappy  idlers  of  Verdun.  What  splen- 
did loyalty  there  must  have  been  in  those 
humble  Frenchmen  which  never  allowed  them 
for  one  instant  to  turn  bitterly  upon  the  author 
of  all  their  great  misfortunes.  It  is  all 
brought  vividly  home  by  the  description  of 
their  prisons  given  by  Borrow  in  "Lavengro." 
This  is  the  passage — 


180        THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 

"What  a  strange  appearance  had  those 
mighty  casernes,  with  their  blank,  bhnd  walls, 
without  windows  or  grating,  and  their  slanting 
roofs,  out  of  which,  through  orifices  where 
the  tiles  had  been  removed,  would  be  pro- 
truded dozens  of  grim  heads,  feasting  their 
prison-sick  eyes  on  the  wide  expanse  of  coun- 
try unfolded  from  their  airy  height.  Ah! 
there  was  much  misery  in  those  casernes;  and 
from  those  roofs,  doubtless,  many  a  wistful 
look  was  turned  in  the  direction  of  lovely 
France.  Much  had  the  poor  inmates  to  en- 
dure, and  much  to  complain  of,  to  the  disgrace 
of  England  be  it  said — of  England,  in  gen- 
eral so  kind  and  bountiful.  Rations  of  car- 
rion meat,  and  bread  from  which  I  have  seen 
the  very  hounds  occasionally  turn  away,  were 
unworthy  entertainment  even  for  the  most 
ruffian  enemy,  when  helpless  and  captive;  and 
such,  alas !  was  the  fare  in  those  casernes.  And 
then,  those  visits,  or  rather  ruthless  inroads, 
called  in  the  slang  of  the  place  'straw-plait 
hunts,'  when  in  pursuit  of  a  contraband  article. 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR        181 

t 
which  the  prisoners,  in  order  to  procure  them- 
selves a  few  of  the  necessaries  and  comforts 
of  existence,  were  in  the  habit  of  making,  red- 
coated  battahons  were  marched  into  the 
prisons,  who,  with  the  bayonet's  point,  carried 
havoc  and  ruin  into  every  poor  convenience 
which  ingenious  wretchedness  had  been  endea- 
voring to  raise  around  it;  and  then  the  tri- 
umphant exit  with  the  miserable  booty,  and 
worst  of  all,  the  accursed  bonfire,  on  the  bar- 
rack parade  of  the  plait  contraband,  beneath 
the  view  of  glaring  eyeballs  from  those  lofty 
roofs,  amid  the  hurrahs  of  the  troops  fre- 
quently drowned  in  the  curses  poured  down 
from  above  like  a  tempest-shower,  or  in  the 
terrific  war-whoop  of  'Vive  I'Empereur !' " 

There  is  a  little  vignette  of  Napoleon's  men 
in  captivitj^  Here  is  another  which  is  worth 
preserving  of  the  bearing  of  his  veterans  when 
wounded  on  the  field  of  battle.  It  is  from 
Mercer's  recollections  of  the  Battle  of  Water- 
loo.    ISIercer  had  spent  the  day  firing  case  into 


182  THROUGH  THE  IVIAGIC  DOOR 
the  French  cavalry  at  ranges  from  fifty  to  two 
hundd'ed  yards,  losing  two-thirds  of  his  own 
battery  in  the  process.  In  the  evening  he 
had  a  look  at  some  of  his  own  grim  handi- 
work. 

"I  had  satisfied  my  curiosity  at  Hougou- 
mont,  and  was  retracing  my  steps  up  the  hill 
when  my  attention  was  called  to  a  group  of 
wounded  Frenchmen  by  the  calm,  dignified, 
and  soldier-like  oration  addressed  by  one»  of 
them  to  the  rest.  I  cannot,  like  Livy,  com- 
pose a  fine  harangue  for  my  hero,  and,  of 
course,  I  could  not  retain  the  precise  words, 
but  the  import  of  them  was  to  exhort  them 
to  bear  their  sufferings  with  fortitude;  not  to 
repine,  like  women  or  children,  at  what  every 
soldier  should  have  made  up  his  mind  to  suffer 
as  the  fortune  of  war,  but  above  all,  to  remem- 
ber that  they  were  surrounded  by  Englishmen, 
before  whom  they  ought  to  be  doubly  careful 
not  to  disgrace  themselves  by  displaying  such 
an  unsoldier-like  want  of  fortitude. 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  183 
"The  speaker  was  sitting  on  the  ground  with 
his  lance  stuck  upright  beside  him — an  old  vet- 
eran with  thick  bushy,  grizzly  beard,  counte- 
nance like  a  lion — a  lancer  of  the  old  guard, 
and  no  doubt  had  fought  in  many  a  field. 
One  hand  was  flourished  in  the  air  as  he  spoke, 
the  other,  severed  at  the  wrist,  lay  on  the  earth 
beside  him;  one  ball  (case-shot,  probably)  had 
entered  his  body,  another  had  broken  his  leg. 
His  suffering,  after  a  night  of  exposure  so 
mangled,  must  have  been  great;  yet  he  be- 
trayed it  not.  His  bearing  was  that  of  a 
Roman,  or  perhaps  an  Indian  warrior,  and  I 
could  fancy  him  concluding  appropriately  his 
speech  in  the  words  of  the  Mexican  king,  'And 
I  too;  am  I  on  a  bed  of  roses?'  " 

What  a  load  of  moral  responsibility  upon 
one  man!  But  his  mind  was  insensible  to 
moral  responsibility.  Surely  if  it  had  not  been 
it  must  have  been  crushed  beneath  it.  Now, 
if  you  want  to  understand  the  character  of 
Napoleon — but  surely  I  must  take  a  fresh  start 


184.       THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
before  I  launch  on  so  portentous  a  subject  as 
that. 

But  before  I  leave  the  military  men  let  me, 
for  the  credit  of  my  own  country,  after  that 
infamous  incident  of  the  letters,  indicate  these 
six  well-thumbed  volumes  of  "Napier's  His- 
tory." This  is  the  story  of  the  great  Peninsu- 
lar War,  by  one  who  fought  through  it  him- 
self, and  in  no  history  has  a  more  chivalrous 
and  manly  account  been  given  of  one's  enemy. 
Indeed,  Napier  seems  to  me  to  push  it  too  far, 
for  his  admiration  appears  to  extend  not  only 
to  the  gallant  soldiers  who  opposed  him,  but  to 
the  character  and  to  the  ultimate  aims  of  their 
leader.  He  was,  in  fact,  a  political  follower 
of  Charles  James  Fox,  and  his  heart  seems  to 
have  been  with  the  enemy  even  at  the  moment 
when  he  led  his  men  most  desperately  against 
them.  In  the  verdict  of  history  the  action  of 
those  men  who,  in  their  honest  zeal  for  free- 
dom, inflamed  somewhat  by  political  strife, 
turned  against  their  own  country,  when  it  was 
in  truth  the  Champion  of  Freedom,  and  ap- 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  185 
proved  of  a  military  despot  of  the  most  un- 
compromising kind,  seems  wildly  foolish. 

But  if  Napier's  politics  may  seem  strange, 
his  soldiering  was  splendid,  and  his  prose 
among  the  very  best  that  I  know.  There  are 
passages  in  that  work — the  one  which  describes 
the  breach  of  Badajos,  that  of  the  charge  of 
the  Fusiliers  at  Albuera,  and  that  of  the 
French  advance  at  Fuentes  d'Onoro — which 
once  read  haunt  the  mind  for  ever.  The  book 
is  a  worthy  monument  of  a  great  national  epic. 
Alasl  for  the  pregnant  sentence  with  which  it 
closes,  "So  ended  the  great  war,  and  with  it 
all  memory  of  the  services  of  the  veterans." 
Was  there  ever  a  British  war  of  which  the 
same  might  not  have  been  written? 

The  quotation  which  I  have  given  from 
Mercer's  book  turns  my  thoughts  in  the  direc- 
tion of  the  British  military  reminiscences  of 
that  period,  less  numerous,  less  varied,  and  less 
central  than  the  French,  but  full  of  character 
and  interest  all  the  same.  I  have  found  that 
if  I  am  turned  loose  in  a  large  library,  after 


186  TPmOUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
hesitating-  over  covers  for  half  an  hour  or  so, 
it  is  usually  a  book  of  soldier  memoirs  which  I 
take  down.  INIan  is  never  so  interesting  as 
when  he  is  thoroughly  in  earnest,  and  no  one  is 
so  earnest  as  he  whose  life  is  at  stake  upon  the 
event.  But  of  all  types  of  soldier  the  best  is 
the  man  who  is  keen  uj^on  his  work,  and  yet 
has  general  culture  which  enables  him  to  see 
that  work  in  its  due  ^perspective,  and  to  sympa- 
thize with  the  gentler  asj)irations  of  mankind. 
Such  a  man  is  Mercer,  an  ice-cool  fighter,  with 
a  sense  of  discipline  and  decorum  which  pre- 
vented him  from  moving  when  a  bombshell 
was  fizzing  between  his  feet,  and  yet  a  man  of 
thoughtful  and  philosophic  temperament,  with 
a  weakness  for  solitary  musings,  for  children, 
and  for  flowers.  He  has  written  for  all  time 
the  classic  account  of  a  great  battle,  seen  from 
the  point  of  view  of  a  battery  commander. 
Many  others  of  Wellington's  soldiers  wrote 
their  personal  reminiscences.  You  can  get 
them,  as  I  have  them  there,  in  the  pleasant 
abridgment  of  "Wellington's   Men"    (admi- 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  187 
rably  edited  by  Dr.  Fitchett) — Anton  the 
Highlander,  Harris  the  rifleman,  and  Kincaid 
of  the  same  corps.  It  is  a  most  singular  fate 
which  has  made  an  Australian  nonconformist 
clergyman  the  most  sympathetic  and  eloquent 
reconstructor  of  those  old  heroes,  but  it  is  a 
noble  example  of  that  unity  of  the  British  race, 
which  in  fifty  scattered  lands  still  mourns  or 
rejoices  over  the  same  historic  record. 

And  just  one  word,  before  I  close  down  this 
over-long  and  too  discursive  chatter,  on  the 
subject  of  yonder  twin  red  volumes  which 
flank  the  shelf.  They  are  ^Maxwell's  "History 
of  Wellington,"  and  I  do  not  think  you  w411 
find  a  better  or  more  readable  one.  The 
reader  must  ever  feel  towards  the  great  sol- 
dier what  his  own  immediate  followers  felt, 
resj^ect  rather  than  affection.  One's  failure  to 
attain  a  more  aif  ectionate  emotion  is  alleviated 
b}'-  the  knowledge  that  it  was  the  last  thing 
which  he  invited  or  desired.  "Don't  be  a 
damned  fool,  sir!"  was  his  exhortation  to  the 
good  citizen  who  had  paid  him  a  compliment. 


188  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
It  was  a  curious,  callous  nature,  brusque  and 
limited.  The  hardest  huntsman  learns  to  love 
his  hounds,  but  he  showed  no  affection  and  a 
good  deal  of  contempt  for  the  men  who  had 
been  his  instruments.  "They  are  the  scum  of 
the  earth,"  said  he.  "All  English  soldiers  are 
fellows  who  have  enlisted  for  drink.  That  is 
the  plain  fact — they  have  all  enlisted  for 
drink."  His  general  orders  were  full  of  un- 
deserved rej)roaches  at  a  time  when  the  most 
lavish  praise  could  hardly  have  met  the  real 
deserts  of  his  army.  When  the  wars  were 
done  he  saw  little,  save  in  his  official  capacity, 
of  his  old  comrades-in-arms.  And  yet,  from 
major-general  to  drummer-boy,  he  was  the 
man  whom  they  would  all  have  elected  to  serve 
under,  had  the  work  to  be  done  once  more.  As 
one  of  them  said,  "The  sight  of  his  long  nose 
was  worth  ten  thousand  men  on  a  field  of  bat- 
tle." They  were  themselves  a  leathery  breed, 
and  cared  little  for  the  gentler  amenities  so 
long  as  the  French  were  well  drubbed. 

His  mind,  which  was  comprehensive  and 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  189 
alert  in  warfare,  was  singularly  limited  in  civil 
affairs.  As  a  statesman  he  was  so  constant 
an  example  of  devotion  to  duty,  self-sacrifice, 
and  high  disinterested  character,  that  the  coun- 
try was  the  better  for  his  presence.  But  he 
fiercely  opposed  Catholic  Emancipation,  the 
Reform  Bill,  and  everything  upon  which  our 
modern  life  is  founded.  He  could  never  be 
brought  to  see  that  a  pyramid  should  stand  on 
its  base  and  not  on  its  apex,  and  that  the  larger 
the  pyramid,  the  broader  should  be  the  base. 
Even  in  military  affairs  he  was  averse  from 
every  change,  and  I  know  of  no  improvements 
which  came  from  his  initiative  during  all  those 
years  when  his  authority  was  supreme.  The 
floggings  which  broke  a  man's  spirit  and  self- 
respect,  the  leathern  stock  which  hampered  his 
movements,  all  the  old  traditional  regime 
found  a  champion  in  him.  On  the  other  hand, 
he  strongly  opposed  the  introduction  of  the 
percussion  cap  as  opposed  to  the  flint  and 
steel  in  the  musket.  Neither  in  war  nor  in  pol- 
itics did  he  rightly  judge  the  future. 


190        THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 

And  yet  in  reading  his  letters  and  dispatches, 
one  is  surprised  sometimes  at  the  incisive 
thought  and  its  vigorous  expression.  There 
is  a  passage  in  which  he  describes  the  way  in 
which  his  soldiers  would  occasionally  desert 
into  some  town  which  he  was  besieging. 
"They  knew,"  he  writes,  "that  they  must  be 
taken,  for  when  we  lay  our  bloody  hands  upon 
a  place  we  are  sure  to  take  it,  sooner  or  later; 
but  they  liked  being  dry  and  under  cover,  and 
then  that  extraordinary  caprice  which  always 
pervades  the  English  character!  Our  desert- 
ers are  very  badly  treated  by  the  enemy ;  those 
who  deserted  in  France  were  treated  as  the 
lowest  of  mortals,  slaves  and  scavengers. 
Nothing  but  English  caprice  can  account  for 
it;  just  what  makes  our  noblemen  associate 
with  stage-coach  drivers,  and  become  stage- 
coach drivers  themselves."  After  reading  that 
passage,  how  often  does  the  phrase  "the  ex- 
traordinary caprice  which  always  pervades  the 
English  character"  come  back  as  one  observes 
some  fresh  manifestation  of  it! 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  191 
But  let  not  my  last  note  upon  the  great  duke 
be  a  carping  one.  Rather  let  my  final  sentence 
be  one  which  will  remind  you  of  his  frugal  and 
abstemious  life,  his  carpetless  floor  and  little 
camp  bed,  his  precise  courtesy  which  left  no 
humblest  letter  unanswered,  his  courage  which 
never  flinched,  his  tenacity  which  never  fal- 
tered, his  sense  of  duty  which  made  his  life 
one  long  unselfish  efl'ort  on  behalf  of  what 
seemed  to  him  to  be  the  highest  interest  of  the 
State.  Go  down  and  stand  by  the  huge  gran- 
ite sarcophagus  in  the  dim  light  of  the  crypt 
of  St.  Paul's,  and  in  the  hush  of  that  austere 
spot,  cast  back  your  mind  to  the  days  when 
little  England  alone  stood  firm  against  the 
greatest  soldier  and  the  greatest  army  that  the 
world  has  ever  known.  Then  you  feel  what 
this  dead  man  stood  for,  and  you  pray  that  we 
may  still  find  such  another  amongst  us  when 
the  clouds  gather  once  again. 

You  see  that  the  literature  of  Waterloo  is 
well  represented  in  my  small  military  library. 
Of  all  books  dealing  with  the  personal  view  of 


192  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
the  matter,  I  think  that  "Siborne's  Letters,'* 
which  is  a  collection  of  the  narratives  of  sur- 
viving officers  made  by  Siborne  in  the  year 
1827,  is  the  most  interesting.  Gronow's  ac- 
count is  also  very  vivid  and  interesting.  Of 
the  strategical  narratives,  Houssaye's  book  is 
my  favorite.  Taken  from  the  French  point 
of  view,  it  gets  the  actions  of  the  allies  in  truer 
perspective  than  any  English  or  German  ac- 
count can  do;  but  there  is  a  fascination  about 
that  great  combat  which  makes  every  narra- 
tive that  bears  upon  it  of  enthralling  interest. 
Wellington  used  to  say  that  too  much  was 
made  of  it,  and  that  one  would  imagine  that 
the  British  Army  had  never  fought  a  battle 
before.  It  was  a  characteristic  speech,  but  it 
must  be  admitted  that  the  British  Army  never 
had,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  for  many  centuries 
fought  a  battle  which  was  finally  decisive  of 
a  great  European  war.  There  lies  the  peren- 
nial interest  of  the  incident,  that  it  was  the  last 
act  of  that  long-drawn  drama,  and  that  to  the 
very  fall  of  the  curtain  no  man  could  tell  how 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  193 
the  play  would  end — "the  nearest  run  thing 
that  ever  you  saw" — that  was  the  victor's  de- 
scription. It  is  a  singular  thing  that  during 
those  twenty-five  years  of  incessant  fighting 
the  material  and  methods  of  warfare  made  so 
little  progress.  So  far  as  I  know,  there  was 
no  great  change  in  either  between  1789  and 
1815.  The  breech-loader,  heavy  artillery,  the 
ironclad,  all  great  advances  in  the  art  of  war, 
have  been  invented  in  time  of  peace.  There 
are  some  improvements  so  obvious,  and  at  the 
same  time  so  valuable,  that  it  is  extraordinary 
that  they  were  not  adopted.  Signaling,  for 
examj)le,  whether  by  heliograph  or  by  flag- 
waving,  would  have  made  an  immense  differ- 
ence in  the  Napoleonic  campaigns.  The  prin- 
ciple of  the  semaphore  was  well  known,  and 
Belgium,  with  its  numerous  windmills,  would 
seem  to  be  furnished  with  natural  semaphores. 
Yet  in  the  four  days  during  which  the  cam- 
paign of  Waterloo  was  fought,  the  whole 
scheme  of  military  operations  on  both  sides 
was  again  and  again  imperilled,  and  finally 


194  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
in  the  case  of  the  French  brought  to  utter  ruin 
by  lack  of  that  inteUigence  which  could  so 
easily  have  been  conveyed.  June  18th  was  at 
intervals  a  sunshiny  day — a  four-inch  glass 
mirror  would  have  j^ut  Napoleon  in  communi- 
cation with  Gruchy,  and  the  whole  history  of 
Europe  might  have  been  altered.  Wellington 
himself  suffered  dreadfully  from  defective  in- 
formation which  might  have  been  easily  sup- 
plied. The  unexpected  presence  of  the 
French  army  was  first  discovered  at  four  in 
the  morning  of  June  15.  It  was  of  enormous 
importance  to  get  the  news  rapidly  to  Welling- 
ton at  Brussels  that  he  might  instantly  con- 
centrate his  scattered  forces  on  the  best  line  of 
resistance — yet,  through  the  folly  of  sending 
only  a  single  messenger,  this  vital  informa- 
tion did  not  reach  him  until  three  in  the  after- 
noon, the  distance  being  thirty  miles.  Again, 
when  Blucher  was  defeated  at  Ligny  on  the 
16th,  it  was  of  enormous  importance  that  Wel- 
lington should  know  at  once  the  line  of  his  re- 
treat so  as  to  prevent  the  French  from  driving 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  195 
a  wedge  between  them.  The  single  Prussian 
officer  who  was  despatched  with  this  informa- 
tion was  wounded,  and  never  reached  his  desti- 
nation, and  it  was  only  next  day  that  Welling- 
ton learned  the  Prussian  plans.  On  what  tiny 
things  does  History  depend! 


IX 

The  contemplation  of  my  fine  little  regiment 
of  French  military  memoirs  had  brought  me 
to  the  question  of  Napoleon  himself,  and  you 
see  that  I  have  a  very  fair  line  dealing  with  him 
also.  There  is  Scott's  life,  which  is  not  en- 
tirely a  success.  His  ink  was  too  precious  to 
be  shed  in  such  a  venture.  But  here  are  the 
three  volumes  of  the  physician  Bourrienne — 
that  Bourrienne  who  knew  him  so  well.  Does 
any  one  ever  know  a  man  so  well  as  his  doctor? 
They  are  quite  excellent  and  admirably  trans- 
lated. Meneval  also — the  patient  Meneval — 
who  wrote  for  untold  hours  to  dictation  at  ordi- 
nary talking  speed,  and  yet  was  expected  to 
be  legible  and  to  make  no  mistakes.  At  least 
his  master  could  not  fairly  criticise  his  legi- 
bility, for  is  it  not  on  record  that  when  Na- 
poleon's holograph  account  of  an  engagement 

196 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  197 
was  laid  before  the  President  of  the  Senate,  the 
worthy  man  thought  that  it  was  a  drawn  plan 
of  the  battle?  Meneval  survived  his  master 
and  has  left  an  excellent  and  intimate  account 
of  him.  There  is  Constant's  account,  also 
written  from  that  point  of  view  in  which  it  is 
proverbial  that  no  man  is  a  hero.  But  of  all 
the  vivid  terrible  pictures  of  Napoleon  the  most 
haunting  is  by  a  man  who  never  saw  him  and 
whose  book  was  not  directly  dealing  with  him. 
I  mean  Taine's  account  of  him,  in  the  first 
volume  of  "Les  Origines  de  la  France  Con- 
temporaine."  You  can  never  forget  it  when 
once  you  have  read  it.  He  produces  his  effect 
in  a  wonderful,  and  to  me  a  novel,  way.  He 
does  not,  for  example,  say  in  mere  crude  words 
that  Napoleon  had  a  more  than  mediaeval  Ital- 
ian cunning.  He  presents  a  succession  of 
documents — gives  a  series  of  contemporary  in- 
stances to  prove  it.  Then,  having  got  that 
fixed  in  your  head  by  blow  after  blow,  he  passes 
on  to  another  phase  of  his  character,  his  cold- 
hearted  amorousness,  his  power  of  work,  his 


198  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
spoiled  child  wilfulness,  or  some  other  quality, 
and  piles  up  his  illustrations  of  that.  Instead, 
for  example,  of  saying  that  the  Emperor  had 
a  marvelous  memory  for  detail,  we  have  the 
account  of  the  head  of  Artillery  laying  the  list 
of  all  the  guns  in  France  before  his  master, 
who  looked  over  it  and  remarked,  "Yes,  but 
you  have  omitted  two  in  a  fort  near  Dieppe." 
So  the  man  is  gradually  etched  in  with  indel- 
ible ink.  It  is  a  wonderful  figure  of  which 
you  are  conscious  in  the  end,  the  figure  of  an 
archangel,  but  surely  of  an  archangel  of  dark- 
ness. 

We  will,  after  Taine's  method,  take  one  fact 
and  let  it  speak  for  itself.  Napoleon  left  a 
legacy  in  a  codicil  to  his  will  to  a  man  who  tried 
to  assassinate  Wellington.  There  is  the 
mediaeval  Italian  again!  He  was  no  more  a 
Corsican  than  the  Englishman  born  in  India 
is  a  Hindoo.  Read  the  lives  of  the  Borgias, 
the  Sforzas,  the  ^ledicis,  and  of  all  the  lustful, 
cruel,  broad-minded,  art-loving,  talented  des- 
pots   of   the   little    Itahan    States,    including 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  199 
Genoa,  from  which  the  Buonapartes  migrated. 
There  at  once  you  get  the  real  descent  of  the 
man,  with  all  the  stigmata  clear  upon  him — 
the  outward  calm,  the  inward  passion,  the  layer 
of  snow  above  the  volcano,  everything  which 
characterized  the  old  despots  of  his  native  land, 
the  pupils  of  Machiavelli,  but  all  raised  to  the 
dimensions  of  genius.  You  can  whitewash 
him  as  you  may,  but  you  will  never  get  a  layer 
thick  enough  to  cover  the  stain  of  that  cold- 
blooded deliberate  endorsement  of  his  noble  ad- 
versary's assassination. 

Another  book  which  gives  an  extraordi- 
narily vivid  picture  of  the  man  is  this  one — the 
INIemoirs  of  Madame  de  Remusat.  She  was 
in  daily  contact  with  him  at  the  Court,  and  she 
studied  him  with  those  quick  critical  eyes  of  a 
clever  woman,  the  most  unerring  things  in  life 
when  they  are  not  blinded  by  love.  If  you 
have  read  those  pages,  you  feel  that  you  know 
him  as  if  you  had  yourself  seen  and  talked 
with  him.  His  singular  mixture  of  the  small 
and  the  great,  his  huge  sweep  of  imagination. 


^00  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
his  very  limited  knowledge,  his  intense  egotism, 
his  impatience  of  obstacles,  his  boorishness,  his 
gross  impertinence  to  women,  his  diabolical 
playing  upon  the  weak  side  of  every  one  with 
whom  he  came  in  contact — they  make  up 
among  them  one  of  the  most  striking  of  his- 
torical portraits. 

Most  of  my  books  deal  with  the  days  of 
his  greatness,  but  here,  you  see,  is  a  three-vol- 
ume account  of  those  weary  years  at  St. 
Helena.  Who  can  help  pitying  the  mewed 
eagle?  And  yet  if  you  play  the  great  game 
you  must  pay  a  stake.  This  was  the  same  man 
who  had  a  royal  duke  shot  in  a  ditch  because 
he  was  a  danger  to  his  throne.  Was  not  he 
himself  a  danger  to  every  throne  in  Europe? 
Why  so  harsh  a  retreat  as  St.  Helena,  you  say? 
Remember  that  he  had  been  j)ut  in  a  milder 
one  before,  that  he  had  broken  away  from  it, 
and  that  the  lives  of  fifty  thousand  men  had 
paid  for  the  mistaken  leniency.  All  this  is 
forgotten  now,  and  the  pathetic  picture  of  the 
modern  Prometheus  chained  to  his  rock  and 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  201 
devoured  by  the  vultures  of  his  own  bitter 
thoughts,  is  the  one  impression  which  the  world 
has  retained.  It  is  always  so  much  easier  to 
follow  the  emotions  than  the  reason,  especially 
where  a  cheap  magnanimity  and  second-hand 
generosity  are  involved.  But  reason  must  still 
insist  that  Europe's  treatment  of  Napoleon 
was  not  vindictive,  and  that  Hudson  Lowe  was 
a  man  who  tried  to  live  up  to  the  trust  which 
had  been  committed  to  him  by  his  country. 

It  was  certainly  not  a  post  from  which  any 
one  would  hope  for  credit.  If  he  were  slack 
and  easy-going  all  would  be  well.  But  there 
would  be  the  chance  of  a  second  flight  with  its 
consequences.  If  he  were  strict  and  assidu- 
ous he  would  be  assuredly  represented  as  a 
petty  tyrant.  "I  am  glad  when  you  are  on 
outpost,"  said  Lowe's  general  in  some  cam- 
paign, "for  then  I  am  sure  of  a  sound  rest." 
He  was  on  outpost  at  St.  Helena,  and  because 
he  was  true  to  his  duties  Europe  (France  in- 
cluded) had  a  sound  rest.  But  he  purchased 
it  at  the  price  of  his  own  reputation.     The 


202  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
greatest  schemer  in  the  world,  having  nothing 
else  on  which  to  vent  his  energies,  turned  them 
all  to  the  task  of  vilifying  his  guardian.  It 
was  natural  enough  that  he  who  had  never 
known  control  should  not  brook  it  now.  It  is 
natural  also  that  sentimentalists  who  have  not 
thought  of  the  details  should  take  the  Emper- 
or's point  of  view.  What  is  deplorable,  how- 
ever, is  that  our  own  people  should  be  misled 
by  one-sided  accounts,  and  that  they  should 
throw  to  the  wolves  a  man  who  was  serving  his 
country  in  a  post  of  anxiety  and  danger,  with 
such  responsibility  upon  him  as  few  could  ever 
have  endured.  Let  them  remember  Montho- 
lon's  remark:  "An  angel  from  heaven  would 
not  have  satisfied  us."  Let  them  recall  also 
that  Lowe  with  ample  material  never  once 
troubled  to  state  his  own  case.  "Je  fais  mon 
devoir  et  suis  indifferent  pour  le  restef'  said 
he,  in  his  interview  with  the  Emperor.  They 
were  no  idle  words. 

Apart  from  this  particular  epoch,  French 
literature,  which  is  so  rich  in  all  its  branches, 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  203 
is  richest  of  all  in  its  memoirs.  Whenever 
there  was  anything  of  interest  going  forward 
there  was  always  some  kindly  gossip  who  knew 
all  about  it,  and  was  ready  to  set  it  down  for 
the  benefit  of  posterity.  Our  own  history  has 
not  nearly  enough  of  these  charming  side- 
lights. Look  at  our  sailors  in  the  Napoleonic 
wars,  for  example.  They  played  an  epoch- 
making  part.  For  nearly  twenty  years  Free- 
dom was  a  Refugee  upon  the  seas.  Had  our 
navy  been  swept  away,  then  all  Europe  would 
have  been  one  organized  despotism.  At  times 
everybody  was  against  us,  fighting  against 
their  own  direct  interests  under  the  pressure 
of  that  terrible  hand.  We  fought  on  the 
waters  with  the  French,  with  the  Spaniards, 
with  the  Danes,  with  the  Russians,  with  the 
Turks,  even  with  our  American  kinsmen. 
Middies  grew  into  post-captains,  and  admirals 
into  dotards  during  that  prolonged  struggle. 
And  what  have  we  in  literature  to  show  for  it 
all?  Marryat's  novels,  many  of  which  are 
founded  upon  personal  experience.  Nelson's 


204*  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
and  Collingwood's  letters,  Lord  Cochrane's 
biography — that  is  about  all.  I  wish  we  had 
more  of  CoUingwood,  for  he  wielded  a  fine 
pen.  Do  you  remember  the  sonorous  opening 
of  his  Trafalgar  message  to  his  captains  ? — 

"The  ever  to  be  lamented  death  of  Lord  Vis- 
count ISTelson,  Duke  of  Bronte,  the  Command- 
er-in-Chief, who  fell  in  the  action  of  the  21st, 
in  the  arms  of  Victory,  covered  with  glory, 
whose  memory  will  be  ever  dear  to  the  British 
Navy  and  the  British  Nation;  whose  zeal  for 
the  honor  of  his  king  and  for  the  interests  of 
his  country  will  be  ever  held  up  as  a  shining 
example  for  a  British  seaman — leaves  to  me  a 
duty  to  return  thanks,  etc.,  etc." 

It  was  a  worthy  sentence  to  carry  such  a 
message,  written  too  in  a  raging  tempest,  with 
sinking  vessels  all  around  him.  But  in  the 
main  it  is  a  poor  crop  from  such  a  soil.  No 
doubt  our  sailors  were  too  busy  to  do  much 
writing,  but  none  the  less  one  wonders  that 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  205 
among  so  many  thousands  there  were  not  some 
to  understand  what  a  treasure  their  experiences 
would  be  to  their  descendants.  I  can  call  to 
mind  the  old  three-deckers  which  used  to  rot  in 
Portsmouth  Harbor,  and  I  have  often  thought, 
could  they  tell  their  tales,  what  a  missing  chap- 
ter in  our  literature  they  could  supply. 

It  is  not  only  in  Napoleonic  memoirs  that 
the  French  are  so  fortunate.  The  almost 
equally  interesting  age  of  Louis  XIV.  pro- 
duced an  even  more  wonderful  series.  If  you 
go  deeply  into  the  subject  you  are  amazed  by 
their  number,  and  you  feel  as  if  every  one  at 
the  Court  of  the  Roi  Soleil  had  done  what  he 
(or  she)  could  to  give  away  their  neighbors. 
Just  to  take  the  more  obvious,  there  are  St. 
Simon's  Memoirs — those  in  themselves  give  us 
a  more  comprehensive  and  intimate  view  of  the 
age  than  anything  I  know  of  which  treats  of 
the  times  of  Queen  Victoria.  Then  there  is 
St.  Evremond,  who  is  nearly  as  complete.  Do 
you  want  the  view  of  a  woman  of  quality? 
There  are  the  letters  of  JMadame  de  Sevif^ne 


206  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
(eight  volumes  of  them),  perhaps  tlie  most 
wonderful  series  of  letters  that  any  woman 
has  ever  penned.  Do  you  want  the  confes- 
sions of  a  rake  of  the  period?  Here  are  the 
too  salacious  memoirs  of  the  mischievous  Due 
de  Roquelaure,  not  reading  for  the  nursery 
certainly,  not  even  for  the  boudoir,  but  a 
strange  and  very  intunate  picture  of  the  times. 
All  these  books  fit  into  each  other,  for  the  char- 
acters of  the  one  reappear  in  the  others.  You 
come  to  know  them  quite  familiarly  before  you 
have  finished,  their  loves  and  their  hates,  their 
duels,  their  intrigues,  and  their  ultimate  for- 
tunes. If  you  do  not  care  to  go  so  deeply  into 
it  you  have  only  to  put  Julia  Pardoe's  four- 
volumed  "Court  of  Louis  XIV."  upon  your 
shelf,  and  you  will  find  a  very  admirable  con- 
densation— or  a  distillation  rather,  for  most 
of  the  salt  is  left  behind.  There  is  another 
book  too — that  big  one  on  the  bottom  shelf — 
which  holds  it  all  between  its  brown  and  gold 
covers.  An  extravagance  that — for  it  cost  me 
some  sovereigns — but  it  is  something  to  have 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  207 
the  portraits  of  all  that  wonderful  galaxy,  of 
Louis,  of  the  devout  Maintenon,  of  the  frail 
Montes^jan,  of  Bossuet,  Fenelon,  Moliere,  Ra- 
cine, Pascal,  Conde,  Turenne,  and  all  the  saints 
and  sinners  of  the  age.  If  you  want  to  make 
yourself  a  present,  and  chance  upon  a  copy  of 
"The  Court  and  Times  of  Louis  XIV.,"  you 
will  never  think  that  your  money  has  been 
wasted. 

Well,  I  have  bored  you  unduly,  my  patient 
friend,  with  my  love  of  memoirs,  Napoleonic 
and  otherwise,  which  give  a  touch  of  human 
interest  to  the  arid  records  of  history.  Not 
that  history  should  be  arid.  It  ought  to  be 
the  most  interesting  subject  upon  earth,  the 
story  of  ourselves,  of  our  forefathers,  of  the 
human  race,  the  events  which  made  us  what 
we  are,  and  wherein,  if  Weismann's  views  hold 
the  field,  some  microscopic  fraction  of  this 
very  body  which  for  the  instant  we  chance  to 
inhabit  may  have  borne  a  part.  But  unfortu- 
nately the  power  of  accumulating  knowledge 
and  that  of  imparting  it  are  two  very  different 


208       THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 

things,  and  the  uninspired  historian  becomes 
merely  the  dignified  compiler  of  an  enlarged 
almanac.  Worst  of  all,  when  a  man  does  come 
along  with  fancy  and  imagination,  who  can 
breathe  the  breath  of  life  into  the  dry  bones,  it 
is  the  fashion  for  the  dryasdusts  to  belabor  him, 
as  one  who  has  wandered  away  from  the  ortho- 
dox path  and  must  necessarily  be  inaccurate. 
So  Froude  was  attacked.  So  also  JNIacaulay 
in  his  day.  But  both  will  be  read  when  the 
pedants  are  forgotten.  If  I  were  asked  my 
very  ideal  of  how  history  should  be  written,  I 
think  I  should  point  to  those  two  rows  on  yon- 
der shelf,  the  one  McCarthy's  "History  of  Our 
Own  Times,"  the  other  Lecky's  "History  of 
England  in  the  Eighteenth  Century."  Curious 
that  each  should  have  been  written  by  an  Irish- 
man, and  that  though  of  opposite  politics  and 
living  in  an  age  when  Irish  affairs  have  caused 
such  bitterness,  both  should  be  conspicuous  not 
merely  for  all  literary  graces,  but  for  that 
broad  toleration  which  sees  every  side  of  a 
question,  and  handles  every  problem  from  the 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  209 
point  of  view  of  the  philosophic  observer  and 
never  of  the  sectarian  partisan. 

By  the  way,  talking  of  history,  have  you 
read  Parkman's  works?  He  was,  I  think, 
among  the  very  greatest  of  the  historians,  and 
yet  one  seldom  hears  his  name.  A  New  Eng- 
land man  by  birth,  and  writing  principally  of 
the  early  history  of  the  American  Settlements 
and  of  French  Canada,  it  is  perhaps  excus- 
able that  he  should  have  no  great  vogue  in 
England,  but  even  among  Americans  I  have 
found  many  who  have  not  read  him.  There 
are  four  of  his  volumes  in  green  and  gold  down 
yonder.  "The  Jesuits  in  Canada,"  and 
"Frontenac,"  but  there  are  others,  all  of  them 
well  worth  reading,  "Pioneers  of  France," 
"Montcalm  and  Wolfe,"  "Discovery  of  the 
Great  West,"  etc.  Some  day  I  hope  to  have 
a  complete  set. 

Taking  only  that  one  book,  "The  Jesuits  in 
Canada,"  it  is  worth  a  reputation  in  itself. 
And  how  noble  a  tribute  is  this  which  a  man  of 
Puritan  blood  pays  to  that  wonderful  Order! 


210  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
He  shows  how  in  the  heyday  of  their  enthu- 
siasm these  brave  soldiers  of  the  Cross  invaded 
Canada  as  they  did  China  and  every  other  place 
where  danger  was  to  be  faced,  and  a  horrible 
death  to  be  found.  I  don't  care  what  faith  a 
man  may  profess,  or  whether  he  be  a  Chris- 
tian at  all,  but  he  cannot  read  these  true  rec- 
ords without  feeling  that  the  very  highest  that 
man  has  ever  evolved  in  sanctity  and  devotion 
was  to  be  found  among  these  marvelous  men. 
They  were  indeed  the  pioneers  of  civilization, 
for  apart  from  doctrines  they  brought  among 
the  savages  the  highest  European  culture,  and 
in  their  own  deportment  an  object-lesson  of 
how  chastely,  austerely,  and  nobly  men  could 
live.  France  has  sent  myriads  of  brave  men 
on  to  her  battlefields,  but  in  all  her  long  record 
of  glory  I  do  not  think  that  she  can  point  to 
any  courage  so  steadfast  and  so  absolutely 
heroic  as  that  of  the  men  of  the  Iroquois  Mis- 
sion. 

How  nobly  they  lived  makes  the  body  of  the 
book,  how  serenely  they  died  forms  the  end  to 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  211 
it.  It  is  a  tale  which  cannot  even  now  be  read 
without  a  shudder — a  nightmare  of  horrors. 
Fanaticism  may  brace  a  man  to  hurl  himself 
into  oblivion,  as  the  Mahdi's  hordes  did  before 
Khartoum,  but  one  feels  that  it  is  at  least  a 
higher  development  of  such  emotion,  where 
men  slowly  and  in  cold  blood  endure  so  thank- 
less a  life,  and  welcome  so  dreadful  an  end. 
Every  faith  can  equally  boast  its  martyrs — a 
painful  thought,  since  it  shows  how  many  thou- 
sands must  have  given  their  blood  for  error — 
but  in  testifying  to  their  faith  these  brave 
men  have  testified  to  something  more  impor- 
tant still,  to  the  subjugation  of  the  body  and  to 
the  absolute  supremacy  of  the  dominating 
spirit. 

The  story  of  Father  Jogue  is  but  one  of 
many,  and  yet  it  is  worth  recounting,  as  show- 
ing the  spirit  of  the  men.  He  also  was  on  the 
Iroquois  Mission,  and  was  so  tortured  and 
mutilated  by  his  sweet  parishioners  that  the 
very  dogs  used  to  howl  at  his  distorted  figure. 
He  made  his  way  back  to  France,  not  for  any 


212  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
reason  of  personal  rest  or  recuperation,  but 
because  he  needed  a  special  dispensation  to 
say  Mass.  The  Catholic  Church  has  a  regu- 
lation that  a  priest  shall  not  be  deformed,  so 
that  the  savages  with  their  knives  had  wrought 
better  than  they  knew.  He  received  his  dispen- 
sation and  was  sent  for  by  Louis  XIV.,  who 
asked  him  what  he  could  do  for  him.  No 
doubt  the  assembled  courtiers  expected  to  hear 
him  ask  for  the  next  vacant  Bisliopric.  What 
he  did  actually  ask  for,  as  the  highest  favor, 
was  to  be  sent  back  to  the  Iroquois  INIission, 
where  the  savages  signalized  his  arrival  by 
burning  him  alive. 

Parkman  is  worth  reading,  if  it  were  only 
for  his  account  of  the  Indians.  Perhaps  the 
very  strangest  thing  about  them,  and  the  most 
unaccountable,  is  their  small  numbers.  The 
Iroquois  were  one  of  the  most  formidable  of 
tribes.  They  were  of  the  Five  Nations,  whose 
scalping-parties  wandered  over  an  expanse  of 
thousands  of  square  miles.  Yet  there  is  good 
reason  to  doubt  whether  the  whole  five  nations 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  213 
could  have  put  as  many  thousand  warriors  in 
the  field.  It  was  the  same  with  all  the  other 
tribes  of  North  Americans,  both  in  the  east, 
the  north,  and  the  west.  Their  numbers  were 
always  insignificant.  And  yet  they  had  that 
huge  country  to  themselves,  the  best  of  cli- 
mates, and  plenty  of  food.  Why  was  it  that 
they  did  not  people  it  thickly?  It  may  be 
taken  as  a  striking  example  of  the  purpose  and 
design  which  run  through  the  affairs  of  men, 
that  at  the  very  moment  when  the  old  world 
was  ready  to  overflow  the  new  world  was 
empty  to  receive  it.  Had  North  America  been 
peopled  as  China  is  peopled,  the  Europeans 
might  have  founded  some  settlements,  but 
could  never  have  taken  possession  of  the  Con- 
tinent. BufFon  has  made  the  striking  remark 
that  the  creative  power  appeared  to  have  never 
had  great  vigor  in  America.  He  alluded  to 
the  abundance  of  the  flora  and  fauna  as  com- 
pared with  that  of  other  great  divisions  of  the 
earth's  surface.  Whether  the  numbers  of  the 
Indians  are  an  illustration  of  the  same  fact,  or 


214  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
whether  there  is  some  special  cause,  is  beyond 
my  very  modest  scientific  attainments.  When 
one  reflects  upon  the  countless  herds  of  bison 
which  used  to  cover  the  Western  plains,  or 
marks  in  the  present  day  the  race  statistics  of 
the  French  Canadians  at  one  end  of  the  Conti- 
nent, and  of  the  Southern  negro  at  the  other, 
it  seems  absurd  to  suppose  that  there  is  any 
geographical  reason  against  Nature  being  as 
prolific  here  as  elsewhere.  However,  these  be 
deeper  waters,  and  with  your  leave  we  will  get 
back  into  my  usual  six-inch  wading-depth  once 
more. 


X 

I  don't  know  how  those  two  httle  books  got 
in  there.  They  are  Henley's  "Song  of  the 
Sword"  and  "Book  of  Verses."  They  ought 
to  be  over  yonder  in  the  rather  hmited  Poetry 
Section.  Perhaps  it  is  that  I  hke  his  work 
so,  whether  it  be  prose  or  verse,  and  so  have  put 
them  ready  to  my  hand.  He  was  a  remarkable 
man,  a  man  who  was  very  much  greater  than 
his  work,  great  as  some  of  his  work  was.  I 
have  seldom  known  a  personality  more  mag- 
netic and  stimulating.  You  left  his  presence, 
as  a  battery  leaves  a  generating  station, 
charged  up  and  full.  He  made  you  feel  what 
a  lot  of  work  there  was  to  be  done,  and  how 
glorious  it  was  to  be  able  to  do  it,  and  how 
needful  to  get  started  upon  it  that  very  hour. 
With  the  frame  and  the  vitality  of  a  giant  he 
was  cruelly  bereft  of  all  outlet  for  his  strength, 

215 


^16  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
and  so  distilled  it  off  in  hot  words,  in  warm 
sym2)athy,  in  strong  prejudices,  in  all  manner 
of  human  and  stimulating  emotions.  IMuch 
of  the  time  and  energy  which  might  have  built 
an  imperishable  name  for  himself  was  spent  in 
encouraging  others;  but  it  was  not  waste,  for 
he  left  his  broad  thumb-mark  upon  all  that 
passed  beneath  it.  A  dozen  second-hand  Hen- 
leys  are  fortifying  our  literature  to-day. 

Alas  that  we  have  so  little  of  his  very  best! 
for  that  very  best  was  the  finest  of  our  time. 
Few  poets  ever  wrote  sixteen  consecutive  lines 
more  noble  and  more  strong  than  those  which 
begin  with  the  well-known  quatrain — 

"  Out  of  the  night  that  covers  me, 
Black  as  the  pit  from  Pole  to  Pole, 
I  thank  whatever  Gods  there  be 
For  my  unconquerable  soul." 

It  is  grand  literature,  and  it  is  grand  pluck 
too;  for  it  came  from  a  man  who,  through  no 
fault  of  his  own,  had  been  pruned,  and  pruned 
again,  like  an  ill-grown  shrub,  by  the  surgeon's 
knife.     When  he  said — 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR        217 

"  In  the  fell  clutch  of  Circumstance, 

I  have  not  winced  nor  cried  aloud. 

Beneath  the  bludgeonings  of  Chance 

My  head  is  bloody  but  unbowed." 

It  was  not  what  Lady  Byron  called  "The 
mimic  woe"  of  the  poet,  but  it  was  rather  the 
grand  defiance  of  the  Indian  warrior  at  the 
stake,  whose  proud  soul  can  hold  in  hand  his 
quivering  body. 

There  were  two  quite  distinct  veins  of  poetry 
in  Henley,  each  the  very  extreme  from  the 
other.  The  one  was  heroic,  gigantic,  running 
to  large  sweeping  images  and  thundering 
words.  Such  are  the  "Song  of  the  Sword" 
and  much  more  that  he  has  wi'itten,  like  the 
wild  singing  of  some  Northern  scald.  The 
other,  and  to  my  mind  both  the  more  charac- 
teristic and  the  finer  side  of  his  work,  is  deU- 
cate,  precise,  finely  etched,  with  extraordinarily^ 
vivid  little  pictures  drawn  in  carefully  phrased 
and  balanced  English.  Such  are  the  "Hos- 
pital Verses,"  while  the  "London  Voluntaries" 
stand  midway  between  the  two  styles.  What ! 
you   have   not.  read   the   "Hospital   Verses!" 


218  TIIllOUGII  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
Then  get  the  "Book  of  Verses"  and  read  them 
without!  delay.  You  will  surely  find  some- 
thing there  which,  for  good  or  ill,  is  unique. 
You  can  name — or  at  least  I  can  name — noth- 
ing to  compare  it  with.  Goldsmith  and 
Crabhe  have  written  of  indoor  themes;  but 
their  monotonous,  if  majestic  meter,  wxaries 
the  modern  reader.  But  this  is  so  varied,  so 
flexible,  so  dramatic.  It  stands  by  itself. 
Confound  the  weekly  journals  and  all  the  other 
lightning  conductors  which  caused  such  a  man 
to  pass  away,  and  to  leave  a  total  output  of 
about  five  booklets  behind  him! 

However,  all  this  is  an  absolute  digression, 
for  the  books  had  no  business  in  this  shelf  at 
all.  This  corner  is  meant  for  chronicles  of 
various  sorts.  Here  are  three  in  a  line,  which 
carry  you  over  a  splendid  stretch  of  French 
(which  usually  means  European)  history,  each, 
as  luck  would  have  it,  beginning  just  about 
the  time  when  the  other  leaves  oif .  The  first 
is  Froissart,  the  second  de  Monstrelet,  and  the 
third  de  Comines.     When  you  have  read  the 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  219 
three  you  have  the  best  contemporary  account 
first  hand  of  considerably  more  than  a  century 
— a  fair  sKce  out  of  the  total  written  record  of 
the  human  race. 

Froissart  is  always  splendid.  If  you  desire 
to  avoid  the  mediaeval  French,  which  only  a 
specialist  can  read  with  pleasure,  you  can  get 
Lord  Berners'  almost  equally  medieval,  but 
very  charming  English,  or  you  can  turn  to  a 
modern  translation,  such  as  this  one  of  Johnes. 
A  single  page  of  Lord  Berners  is  delightful; 
but  it  is  a  strain,  I  think,  to  read  bulky  vol- 
umes in  an  archaic  style.  Personally,  I  prefer 
the  modern,  and  even  with  that  you  have  shown 
some  patience  before  you  have  reached  the  end 
of  that  big  second  tome. 

I  wonder  whether,  at  the  time,  the  old 
Hainault  Canon  had  any  idea  of  what  he  was 
doing — whether  it  ever  flashed  across  his  mind 
that  the  day  might  come  when  his  book  would 
be  the  one  great  authority,  not  only  about  the 
times  in  which  he  lived,  but  about  the  whole  in- 
stitution of  chivalry?     I  fear  that  it  is  far 


220  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
more  likely  that  his  whole  object  was  to  gain 
some  mundane  advantage  from  the  various 
barons  and  knights  whose  names  and  deeds  he 
recounts.  He  has  left  it  on  record,  for  ex- 
ample, that  when  he  visited  the  Court  of  Eng- 
land he  took  with  him  a  handsomely-bound 
copy  of  his  work;  and,  doubtless,  if  one  could 
follow  the  good  Canon  one  would  find  his  jour- 
neys littered  with  similar  copies  which  were 
probably  expensive  gifts  to  the  recipient,  for 
what  return  would  a  knightly  soul  make  for  a 
book  which  enshrined  his  own  valor? 

But  without  looking  too  curiously  into  his 
motives,  it  must  be  admitted  that  the  work 
could  not  have  been  done  more  thoroughly. 
There  is  something  of  Herodotus  in  the 
Canon's  cheery,  chatty,  garrulous,  take-it-or- 
leave-it  manner.  But  he  has  the  advantage  of 
the  old  Greek  in  accuracy.  Considering  that 
he  belonged  to  the  same  age  which  gravely  ac- 
cepted the  travelers'  tales  of  Sir  John  jMaun- 
deville,  it  is,  I  think,  remarkable  how  careful 
and  accurate  the  chronicler  is.     Take,  for  ex- 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  221 
ample,  his  description  of  Scotland  and  the 
Scotch.  Some  would  give  the  credit  to  Jean- 
le-Bel,  but  that  is  another  matter.  Scotch 
descriptions  are  a  subject  over  which  a  four- 
teenth-century Hainaulter  might  fairly  be  al- 
lowed a  little  scope  for  his  imagination.  Yet 
we  can  see  that  the  account  must  on  the  whole 
have  been  very  correct.  The  Galloway  nags, 
the  girdle-cakes,  the  bagpipes — every  little  de- 
tail rings  true.  Jean-le-Bel  was  actually  pres- 
ent in  a  Border  campaign,  and  from  him 
Froissart  got  his  material ;  but  he  has  never  at- 
tempted to  embroider  it,  and  its  accuracy, 
where  we  can  to  some  extent  test  it,  must  pre- 
dispose us  to  accept  his  accounts  where  they 
are  beyond  our  confirmation. 

But  the  most  interesting  portion  of  old 
Froissart's  work  is  that  which  deals  with  the 
knights  and  the  knight-err  ants  of  his  time, 
their  deeds,  their  habits,  their  methods  of  talk- 
ing. It  is  true  that  he  lived  himself  just  a 
little  after  the  true  heyday  of  chivalry ;  but  he 
was  quite  early  enough  to  have  met  many  of 


222  THROUGH  THE  INIAGIC  DOOR 
the  men  who  had  been  looked  upon  as  the 
flower  of  knighthood  of  the  time.  His  book 
was  read  too,  and  commented  on  by  these  very 
men  (as  many  of  them  as  could  read),  and  so 
we  may  take  it  that  it  was  no  fancy  portrait, 
but  a  correct  picture  of  these  soldiers  which 
is  to  be  found  in  it.  The  accounts  are  always 
consistent.  If  you  collate  the  remarks  and 
speeches  of  the  knights  (as  I  have  had  occa- 
sion to  do)  you  will  find  a  remarkable  uni- 
formity running  through  them.  We  may  be- 
lieve then  that  this  really  does  represent  the 
kind  of  men  who  fought  at  Crecy  and  at 
Poictiers,  in  the  age  when  both  the  French  and 
the  Scottish  kings  were  prisoners  in  London, 
and  England  reached  a  pitch  of  military  glory 
which  has  perhaps  never  been  equaled  in  her 
history. 

In  one  respect  these  knights  differ  from 
anything  which  we  have  had  presented  to  us 
in  our  historical  romances.  To  turn  to  the 
supreme  romancer,  you  will  find  that  Scott's 
mediaeval  knights  were  usually  muscular  ath- 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  223 
letes  in  the  prime  of  life :  Bois-Guilbert,  Front- 
de-Boeuf,  Richard,  Ivanhoe,  Count  Rob- 
ert— they  all  were  such.  But  occasionally  the 
most  famous  of  Froissart's  knights  were  old, 
crij)pled  and  blinded.  Chandos,  the  best  lance 
of  his  day,  must  have  been  over  seventy  when 
he  lost  his  life  through  being  charged  upon  the 
side  on  which  he  had  already  lost  an  eye.  He 
was  well  on  to  that  age  when  he  rode  out  from 
the  English  army  and  slew  the  Spanish  cham- 
pion, big  Marten  Ferrara,  upon  the  morning 
of  Navaretta.  Youth  and  strength  were  very 
useful,  no  doubt,  especially  where  heavy  armor 
had  to  be  carried,  but  once  on  the  horse's  back 
the  gallant  steed  supplied  the  muscles.  In  an 
English  hunting-field  many  a  doddering  old 
man,  when  he  is  once  firmly  seated  in  his  famil- 
iar saddle,  can  give  points  to  the  youngsters 
at  the  game.  So  it  was  among  the  knights, 
and  those  who  had  outlived  all  else  could  still 
carry  to  the  wars  their  wiliness,  their  experience 
with  arms,  and,  above  all,  their  cool  and  un- 
daunted courage. 


224       THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 

Beneath  his  varnish  of  chivahy,  it  cannot  be 
gainsaid  that  the  knight  was  often  a 
bloody-minded  and  ferocious  barbarian. 
There  was  httle  quarter  in  his  wars,  save  when 
a  ransom  might  be  claimed.  But  with  all  his 
savagery,  he  was  a  light-hearted  creature,  like 
a  formidable  boy  playing  a  dreadful  game. 
He  was  true  also  to  his  own  curious  code,  and, 
so  far  as  his  own  class  went,  his  feelings  were 
genial  and  sympathetic,  even  in  warfare. 
There  was  no  personal  feeling  or  bitterness  as 
there  might  be  now  in  a  war  between  French- 
men and  Germans.  On  the  contrary,  the  op- 
ponents were  very  soft-spoken  and  polite  to 
each  other.  "Is  there  any  small  vow  of  which 
I  may  relieve  you?"  "Would  you  desire  to  at- 
tempt some  small  deed  of  arms  upon  me?" 
And  in  the  midst  of  a  fight  they  would  stop 
for  a  breather,  and  converse  amicably  the 
while,  with  many  compliments  upon  each 
other's  prowess.  When  Seaton  the  Scotsman 
had  exchanged  as  many  blows  as  he  wished 
with  a  company  of  French  knights,  he  said. 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  225 
"Thank  you,  gentlemen,  thank  you!"  and  gal- 
loped away.  An  English  knight  made  a  vow, 
"for  his  own  advancement  and  the  exaltation 
of  his  lady,"  that  he  would  ride  into  the  hostile 
city  of  Paris,  and  touch  with  his  lance  the  inner 
barrier.  The  whole  story  is  most  characteris- 
tic of  the  times.  As  he  galloped  up,  the 
French  knights  around  the  barrier,  seeing  that 
he  was  under  vow,  made  no  attack  upon  him, 
and  called  out  to  him  that  he  had  carried  him- 
self well.  As  he  returned,  however,  there 
stood  an  unmannerly  butcher  with  a  pole-axe 
upon  the  sidewalk,  who  struck  him  as  he  passed, 
and  killed  him.  Here  ends  the  chronicler ;  but 
I  have  not  the  least  doubt  that  the  butcher  had 
a  very  evil  time  at  the  hands  of  the  French 
knights,  who  would  not  stand  by  and  see  one 
of  their  own  order,  even  if  he  were  an  enemy, 
meet  so  plebeian  an  end. 

De  Comines,  as  a  chronicler,  is  less  quaint 
and  more  conventional  than  Froissart,  but  the 
writer  of  romance  can  dig  plenty  of  stones  out 
of  that  quarry  for  the  use  of  his  own  little 


226  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
building.  Of  course  Quentin  Durward  has 
come  bodily  out  of  the  pages  of  De  Coniines. 
The  whole  history  of  Louis  XI.  and  his  rela- 
tions with  Charles  the  Bold,  the  strange  life 
at  Plessis-le-Tours,  the  plebeian  courtiers,  the 
barber  and  the  hangman,  the  astrologers,  the 
alternations  of  savage  cruelty  and  of  slavish 
superstition — it  is  all  set  forth  here.  One 
would  imagine  that  such  a  monarch  was  unique, 
that  such  a  mixture  of  strange  qualities  and 
monstrous  crimes  could  never  be  matched,  and 
yet  like  causes  will  always  produce  like  results. 
Read  Walewski's  "Life  of  Ivan  the  Terrible," 
and  you  will  find  that  more  than  a  century  later 
Russia  produced  a  monarch  even  more  diabol- 
ical, but  working  exactly  on  the  same  lines  as 
Louis,  even  down  to  small  details.  The  same 
cruelty,  the  same  superstition,  the  same  astrol- 
ogers, the  same  low-born  associates,  the  same 
residence  outside  the  influence  of  the  great 
cities — a  parallel  could  hardly  be  more  com- 
plete. If  you  have  not  supped  too  full  of 
horrors  when  you  have  finished  Ivan,  then  pass 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  227 
on  to  the  same  author's  account  of  Peter  the 
Great.  What  a  land!  What  a  succession  of 
monarchs!  Blood  and  snow  and  iron!  Both 
Ivan  and  Peter  killed  their  own  sons.  And 
there  is  a  hideous  mockery  of  religion  running 
through  it  all  which  gives  it  a  grotesque  hor- 
ror of  its  own.  We  have  had  our  Henry  the 
Eighth,  but  our  very  worst  would  have  been  a 
wise  and  benevolent  rule  in  Russia. 

Talking  of  romance  and  of  chivalry,  that 
tattered  book  down  yonder  has  as  much  be- 
tween its  disreputable  covers  as  most  that  I 
know.  It  is  Washington  Irving's  "Conquest 
of  Grenada."  I  do  not  know  where  he  got  his 
material  for  this  book — from  Spanish  chron- 
icles, I  presume — but  the  wars  between  the 
Moors  and  the  Christian  knights  must  have 
been  among  the  most  chivalrous  of  exploits.  I 
could  not  name  a  book  which  gets  the  beauty 
and  the  glamour  of  it  better  than  this  one,  the 
lance-heads  gleaming  in  the  dark  defiles,  the 
red  bale  fires  glowing  on  the  crags,  the  stern 
devotion  of  the  mail-clad  Christians,  the  dehon- 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
naire  and  courtly  courage  of  the  dashing  Mos- 
lem. Had  Washington  Irving  written  noth- 
ing else,  that  book  alone  should  have  forced 
the  door  of  every  library.  I  love  all  his  books, 
for  no  man  wrote  fresher  English  with  a  purer 
style;  but  of  them  all  it  is  still  "The  Conquest 
of  Grenada"  to  which  I  turn  most  often. 

To  hark  back  for  a  moment  to  history  as 
seen  in  romances,  here  are  two  exotics  side  by 
side,  which  have  a  flavor  that  is  new.  They 
are  a  brace  of  foreign  novelists,  each  of  whom, 
so  far  as  I  know,  has  only  two  books.  This 
green-and-gold  volume  contains  both  the 
works  of  the  Pomeranian  Meinhold  in  an  ex- 
cellent translation  by  Lady  Wilde.  The  first 
is  "Sidonia  the  Sorceress,"  the  second  "The 
Amber  Witch."  I  don't  know  where  one  may 
turn  for  a  stranger  view  of  the  Middle  Ages, 
the  quaint  details  of  simple  life,  with  sudden 
intervals  of  grotesque  savagery.  The  most 
weird  and  barbarous  things  are  made  human 
and  comprehensible.  There  is  one  incident 
which  haunts  one  after  one  has  read  it,  where 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  229 
the  executioner  chaffers  with  the  villagers  as 
to  what  price  they  will  give  him  for  putting 
some  young  witch  to  the  torture,  running  them 
up  from  a  barrel  of  apples  to  a  barrel  and  a 
half,  on  the  grounds  that  he  is  now  old  and 
rheumatic,  and  that  the  stooping  and  straining 
is  bad  for  his  back.  It  should  be  done  on  a 
sloping  hill,  he  explains,  so  that  the  "dear  little 
children"  may  see  it  easily.  Both  "Sidonia" 
and  "The  Amber  Witch"  give  such  a  picture 
of  old  Germany  as  I  have  never  seen  else- 
where. 

But  Melnhold  belongs  to  a  bj^gone  genera- 
tion. This  other  author  in  whom  I  find  a  new 
note,  and  one  of  great  power,  is  Merejkowski, 
who  is,  if  I  mistake  not,  young  and  with  his 
career  still  before  him.  "The  Forerunner" 
and  "The  Death  of  the  Gods"  are  the  only  two 
books  of  his  which  I  have  been  able  to  obtain, 
but  the  pictures  of  Renaissance  Italy  in  the 
one,  and  of  declining  Rome  in  the  other,  are  in 
my  opinion  among  the  masterpieces  of  fiction. 
I  confess  that  as  I  read  them  I  was  pleased 


230  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
to  find  how  open  my  mind  was  to  new  impres- 
sions, for  one  of  the  greatest  mental  dangers 
which  comes  upon  a  man  as  he  grows  older  is 
that  he  should  become  so  attached  to  old  favor- 
ites that  he  has  no  room  for  the  new-comer, 
and  persuades  himself  that  the  days  of  great 
things  are  at  an  end  because  his  own  poor 
brain  is  getting  ossified.  You  have  but  to 
open  any  critical  paper  to  see  how  common  is 
the  disease,  but  a  knowledge  of  literary  history 
assures  us  that  it  has  always  been  the  same,  and 
that  if  the  young  writer  is  discouraged  by  ad- 
verse comparisons  it  has  been  the  common  lot 
from  the  beginning.  He  has  but  one  resource, 
which  is  to  pay  no  heed  to  criticism,  but  to  try 
to  satisfy  his  own  highest  standard  and  leave 
the  rest  to  time  and  the  public.  Here  is  a 
little  bit  of  doggerel,  pinned,  as  you  see,  beside 
my  bookcase,  which  may  in  a  ruffled  hour  bring 
peace  and  guidance  to  some  younger  brother — 

"  Critics  kind  —  never  mind  ! 
Critics  flatter  —  no  matter ! 
Critics  blame  —  all  the  same! 
Critics  curse  —  none  the  worse ! 
Do  your  best  —  the  rest ! " 


XI 

I  HAVE  been  talking  in  the  past  tense  of  heroes 
and  of  knight-errants,  but  surely  their  day  is 
not  yet  passed.  When  the  earth  has  all  been 
explored,  when  the  last  savage  has  been  tamed, 
when  the  final  cannon  has  been  scrapped,  and 
the  world  has  settled  down  into  unbroken  vir- 
tue and  unutterable  dullness,  men  will  cast 
their  thoughts  back  to  our  age,  and  will  idealize 
our  romance  and  our  courage,  even  as  we  do 
that  of  our  distant  forbears.  "It  is  wonderful 
what  these  people  did  with  their  rude  imple- 
ments and  their  limited  appliances!"  That  is 
what  they  will  say  when  they  read  of  our  ex- 
plorations, our  voyages,  and  our  wars. 

Now,  take  that  first  book  on  my  travel 
shelf.  It  is  Knight's  "Cruise  of  the  Falcon.''' 
Nature  was  guilty  of  the  pun  which  put  this 
soul  into  a  body  so  named.     Read  this  simple 

231 


232  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
record  and  tell  me  if  there  is  anything  in 
Hakluyt  more  wonderful.  Two  landsmen — 
solicitors,  if  I  remember  right — go  down  to 
Southampton  Quay.  They  pick  up  a  long- 
shore j^outh,  and  they  embark  in  a  tiny  boat 
in  which  they  put  to  sea.  Where  do  they  turn 
up?  At  Buenos  Ayres.  Thence  they  pene- 
trate to  Paraguay,  return  to  the  West  Indies, 
sell  their  little  boat  there,  and  go  home.  What 
could  the  Elizabethan  mariners  have  done 
more?  There  are  no  Spanish  galleons  now  to 
vary  the  monotony  of  such  a  voyage,  but  had 
there  been  I  am  very  certain  our  adventurers 
would  have  had  their  share  of  the  doubloons. 
But  surely  it  was  the  nobler  when  done  out  of 
the  pure  lust  of  adventure  and  in  answer  to 
the  call  of  the  sea,  with  no  golden  bait  to  draw 
them  on.  The  old  spirit  still  lives,  disguise 
it  as  you  will  with  top  hats,  frock  coats,  and  all 
prosaic  settings.  Perhaps  even  they  also  will 
seem  romantic  when  centuries  have  blurred 
them. 

Another  book  which  shows  the  romance  and 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  S33 
the  heroism  which  still  linger  upon  earth  is  that 
large  copy  of  the  "Voyage  of  the  Discovery 
in  the  Antarctic"  by  Captain  Scott.  Written 
in  plain  sailor  fashion  with  no  attempt  at  over- 
statement or  color,  it  none  the  less  (or  perhaps 
all  the  more)  leaves  a  deep  imj^ression  upon 
the  mind.  As  one  reads  it,  and  reflects  on 
what  one  reads,  one  seems  to  get  a  clear  view 
of  just  those  qualities  which  make. the  best  kind 
of  Briton.  Every  nation  produces  brave  men. 
Every  nation  has  men  of  energy.  But  there 
is  a  certain  type  which  mixes  its  bravery  and  its 
energy  with  a  gentle  modesty  and  a  boyish 
good-humor,  and  it  is  just  this  type  which  is 
the  highest.  Here  the  whole  expedition  seem 
to  have  been  imbued  with  the  spirit  of  their 
commander.  No  flinching,  no  grumbling, 
every  discomfort  taken  as  a  jest,  no  thought  of 
self,  each  working  only  for  the  success  of  the 
enterprise.  When  you  have  read  of  such  pri- 
vations so  endured  and  so  chronicled,  it  makes 
one  ashamed  to  show  emotion  over  the  small 
annoyances   of  daily  life.     Head  of   Scott's 


234       THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
blinded,  scurvy-struck  party  staggering  on  to 
their  goal,  and  then  complain,  if  you  can,  of 
the  heat  of  a  northern  sun,  or  the  dust  of  a 
country  road. 

That  is  one  of  the  weaknesses  of  modern 
life.  We  complain  too  much.  We  are  not 
ashamed  of  complaining.  Time  was  when  it 
was  otherwise — when  it  was  thought  effemi- 
nate to  complain.  The  Gentleman  should  al- 
ways be  the  Stoic,  with  his  soul  too  great  to  be 
affected  by  the  small  troubles  of  life.  "You 
look  cold,  sir,"  said  an  English  sympathizer 
to  a  French  emigre.  The  fallen  noble  drew 
himself  up  in  his  threadbare  coat.  "Sir,"  said 
he,  "a  gentleman  is  never  cold."  One's  con- 
sideration for  others  as  well  as  one's  own  self- 
respect  should  check  the  grumble.  This  self- 
suppression,  and  also  the  concealment  of  pain 
are  two  of  the  old  noblesse  oblige  characteris- 
tics which  are  now  little  more  than  a  tradition. 
Public  opinion  should  be  firmer  on  the  matter. 
The  man  who  must  hop  because  his  shin  is 
hacked,  or  wring  his  hand  because  his  knuckles 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  235 
are  bruised  should  be  made  to  feel  that  he  is 
an  object  not  of  pity,  but  of  contempt. 

The  tradition  of  Arctic  exploration  is  a 
noble  one  among  Americans  as  well  as  our- 
selves. The  next  book  is  a  case  in  point.  It 
is  Greely's  "Arctic  Service,"  and  it  is  a  worthy 
shelf-companion  to  Scott's  "Account  of  the 
Voyage  of  the  Discovery.''  There  are  inci- 
dents in  this  book  which  one  can  never  forget. 
The  episode  of  those  twenty-odd  men  lying 
upon  that  horrible  bluff,  and  dying  one  a  day 
from  cold  and  hunger  and  scurvy,  is  one  which 
dwarfs  all  our  puny  tragedies  of  romance. 
And  the  gallant  starving  leader  giving  lectures 
on  abstract  science  in  an  attempt  to  take  the 
thoughts  of  the  dying  men  away  from  their 
sufferings — what  a  picture!  It  is  bad  to  suf- 
fer from  cold  and  bad  to  suffer  from  hunger, 
and  bad  to  live  in  the  dark ;  but  that  men  could 
do  all  these  things  for  six  months  on  end,  and 
that  some  should  live  to  tell  the  tale,  is,  indeed, 
a  marvel.  What  a  world  of  feeling  lies  in  the 
exclamation    of   the   poor    dying    lieutenant: 


236       THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
"Well,  this  is  wretched,"  he  groaned,  as  he 
turned  his  face  to  the  wall. 

The  Anglo-Celtic  race  has  always  run  to  in- 
dividualism, and  yet  there  is  none  which  is  ca- 
pable of  conceiving  and  carrying  out  a  finer 
ideal  of  discipline.  There  is  nothing  in  Ro- 
man or  Grecian  annals,  not  even  the  lava- 
baked  sentry  at  Pompeii,  which  gives  a  more 
sternly  fine  object-lesson  in  duty  than  the 
young  recruits  of  the  British  army  who  went 
down  in  their  ranks  on  the  Birkenhead.  And 
this  expedition  of  Greely's  gave  rise  to  an- 
other example  which  seems  to  me  hardly  less 
remarkable.  You  may  remember,  if  you  have 
read  the  book,  that  even  when  there  were  only 
about  eight  unfortunates  still  left,  hardly  able 
to  move  for  weakness  and  hunger,  the  seven 
took  the  odd  man  out  upon  the  ice,  and  shot 
him  dead  for  breach  of  discipline.  The  whole 
grim  proceeding  was  carried  out  with  as  much 
method  and  signing  of  papers,  as  if  they  were 
all  within  sight  of  the  Capitol  at  Washington. 
His  offense  had  consisted,  so  far  as  I  can  re- 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  237 
member,  of  stealing  and  eating  the  thong 
which  bound  two  portions  of  the  sledge  to- 
gether, something  about  as  appetizing  as  a 
bootlace.  It  is  only  fair  to  the  commander  to 
say,  however,  that  it  was  one  of  a  series  of 
petty  thefts,  and  that  the  thong  of  a  sledge 
might  mean  life  or  death  to  the  whole  party. 

Personally  I  must  confess  that  anything 
bearing  upon  the  Arctic  Seas  is  always  of  the 
deepest  interest  to  me.  He  who  has  once  been 
within  the  borders  of  that  mysterious  region, 
which  can  be  both  the  most  lovely  and  the 
most  repellent  upon  earth,  must  always  retain 
something  of  its  glamour.  Standing  on  the 
confines  of  known  geography  I  have  shot 
the  southward  flying  ducks,  and  have  taken 
from  their  gizzards  pebbles  which  they  have 
swallowed  in  some  land  whose  shores  no  hu- 
man foot  has  trod.  The  memory  of  that  in- 
expressible air,  of  the  great  ice-girt  lakes  of 
deep  blue  water,  of  the  cloudless  sky  shading 
away  into  a  light  green  and  then  into  a  cold 
yellow  at  the  horizon,  of  the  noisy  companion- 


238  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
able  birds,  of  the  huge,  greasy-backed  water 
animals,  of  the  slug-like  seals,  startlingly 
black  against  the  dazzling  whiteness  of  the  ice 
— all  of  it  will  come  back  to  a  man  in  his 
dreams,  and  will  seem  little  more  than  some 
fantastic  dream  itself,  so  removed  is  it  from 
the  main  stream  of  his  life.  And  then  to 
play  a  fish  a  hundred  tons  in  weight,  and 
worth  two  thousand  pounds — but  what  in  the 
world  has  all  this  to  do  with  my  bookcase? 

Yet  it  has  its  place  in  my  main  line  of 
thought,  for  it  leads  me  straight  to  the  very 
next  upon  the  shelf,  Bullen's  "Cruise  of  the 
Cachelotf  a  book  which  is  full  of  the  glamour 
and  the  mystery  of  the  sea,  marred  only  by 
the  brutality  of  those  who  go  down  to  it  in 
ships.  This  is  the  sperm-whale  fishing,  an 
open-sea  aifair,  and  very  different  from  that 
Greenland  ice  groping  in  which  I  served  a 
seven-months'  apprenticeship.  Both,  I  fear, 
are  things  of  the  past — certainly  the  northern 
fishing  is  so,  for  why  should  men  risk  their 
lives  to  get  oil  when  one  has  but  to  sink  a 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  239 
pipe  in  the  ground.  It  is  the  more  fortunate 
then  that  it  should  have  been  handled  by  one 
of  the  most  virile  writers  who  has  described 
a  sailor's  life.  Bullen's  English  at  its  best 
rises  to  a  great  height.  If  I  wished  to  show 
how  high  I  would  take  that  next  book  down, 
"Sea  Idylls." 

How  is  this,  for  example,  if  you  have  an 
ear  for  the  music  of  prose?  It  is  a  simple 
paragraph  out  of  the  magnificent  description 
of  a  long  calm  in  the  tropics. 

"A  change,  unusual  as  unwholesome,  came 
over  the  bright  blue  of  the  sea.  No  longer 
did  it  reflect,  as  in  a  limpid  mirror  the  splen- 
dor of  the  sun,  the  sweet  silvery  glow  of  the 
moon,  or  the  coruscating  clusters  of  count- 
less stars.  Like  the  ashen-gray  hue  that  be- 
dims the  countenance  of  the  dying,  a  filmy 
greasy  skin  appeared  to  overspread  the  recent 
loveliness  of  the  ocean  surface.  The  sea  was 
sick,  stagnant,  and  foul,  from  its  turbid 
waters  arose  a  miasmatic  vapor  like  a  breath 


240  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
of  decay,  which  clung  clammily  to  the  palate 
and  dulled  all  the  senses.  Drawn  by  some 
strange  force,  from  the  unfathomable  depths 
below,  eerie  shapes  sought  the  surface,  blink- 
ing glassily  at  the  unfamiliar  glare  they  had 
exchanged  for  their  native  gloom — uncouth 
creatures  bedight  with  tasselled  fringes  like 
weed-growths  waving  around  them,  fathom- 
long,  medusse  with  colored  spots  like  eyes  clus- 
tering all  over  their  transparent  substance, 
wriggling  worm-like  forms  of  such  elusive 
matter  that  the  smallest  exposure  to  the  sun 
melted  them,  and  they  were  not.  Lower 
down,  vast  pale  shadows  creep  sluggishly 
along,  happily  undistinguishable  as  yet,  but 
adding  a  half-familiar  flavor  to  the  strange, 
faint  smell  that  hung  about  us." 

Take  the  whole  of  that  essay  which  describes 
a  calm  in  the  Tropics,  or  take  the  other  one: 
"Sunrise  as  seen  from  the  Crow's-nest,"  and 
you  must  admit  that  there  have  been  few 
finer    pieces    of    descriptive    English   in    our 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  S41 
time.  If  I  had  to  choose  a  sea  hbrary  of  only 
a  dozen  volumes  I  should  certainly  given  Bul- 
len  two  places.  The  others?  Well,  it  is  so 
much  a  matter  of  individual  taste.  "Tom 
Cringle's  Log"  should  have  one  for  certain. 
I  hope  boys  respond  now  as  they  once  did  to 
the  sharks  and  the  pirates,  the  planters,  and 
all  the  rollicking  high  spirits  of  that  splendid 
book.  Then  there  is  Dana's  "Two  Years  be- 
fore the  Mast."  I  should  find  room  also  for 
Stevenson's  "Wrecker"  and  "Ebb  Tide." 
Clark  Russell  deserves  a  whole  shelf  for  him- 
self, but  anyhow  you  could  not  miss  out  "The 
Wreck  of  the  GrosvenorJ"  Marryat,  of 
course,  must  be  represented,  and  I  should  pick 
"Midshipman  Easy"  and  "Peter  Simple"  as 
his  samples.  Then  throw  in  one  of  Melville's 
Otaheite  books — now  far  too  completely  for- 
gotten— "Typee"  or  "Omoo,"  and  as  a  quite 
modern  flavor  Kipling's  "Captains  Coura- 
geous" and  Jack  London's  "Sea  Wolf,"  with 
Conrad's  "Nigger  of  the  Narcissus."  Then 
you  will  have  enough  to  turn  your  study  into 


242       THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 

a  cabin  and  bring  the  wash  and  surge  to  your 
ears,  if  written  words  can  do  it.  Oh,  how  one 
longs  for  it  sometimes  when  Hfe  grows  too 
artificial,  and  the  old  Viking  blood  begins  to 
stir!  Surely  it  must  linger  in  all  of  us,  for 
no  man  who  dwells  in  an  island  but  had  an 
ancestor  in  longship  or  in  coracle.  Still  more 
must  the  salt  drop  tingle  in  the  blood  of  an 
American  when  you  reflect  that  in  all  that 
broad  continent  there  is  not  one  whose  fore- 
father did  not  cross  3,000  miles  of  ocean. 
And  yet  there  are  in  the  Central  States  mil- 
lions and  millions  of  their  descendants  who 
have  never  seen  the  sea. 

I  have  said  that  "Omoo"  and  "Typee,"  the 
books  in  which  the  sailor  Melville  describes  his 
life  among  the  Otaheitans,  have  sunk  too  rap- 
idly into  obscurity.  What  a  charming  and 
interesting  task  there  is  for  some  critic  of 
catholic  tastes  and  sympathetic  judgment  to 
undertake  rescue  work  among  the  lost  books 
which  would  repay  salvage!  A  small  volume 
setting  forth  their  names  and  their  claims  to 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  243 
attention  would  be  interesting  in  itself,  and 
more  interesting  in  the  material  to  which  it 
would  serve  as  an  introduction.  I  am  sure 
there  are  many  good  books,  possibly  there  are 
some  great  ones,  which  have  been  swept  away 
for  a  time  in  the  rush.  What  chance,  for 
example,  has  any  book  by  an  unknown  author 
which  is  published  at  a  moment  of  great  na- 
tional excitement,  when  some  public  crisis 
arrests  the  popular  mind?  Hundreds  have 
been  still-born  in  this  fashion,  and  are  there 
none  which  should  have  lived  among  them? 
Now,  there  is  a  book,  a  modern  one,  and  writ- 
ten by  a  youth  under  thirty.  It  is  Snaith's 
"Broke  of  Covenden,"  and  it  scarce  attained 
a  second  edition.  I  do  not  say  that  it  is  a 
Classic — I  should  not  like  to  be  positive  that 
it  is  not — but  I  am  perfectly  sure  that  the 
man  who  wrote  it  has  the  possibility  of  a 
Classic  within  him.  Here  is  another  novel, 
"Eight  Days"  by  Forrest.  You  can't  buy  it. 
You  are  lucky  even  if  you  can  find  it  in  a 
library.     Yet  nothing  ever  written  will  bring 


244  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
the  Indian  Mutiny  home  to  you  as  this  book 
will  do.  Here's  another  which  I  will  warrant 
you  never  heard  of.  It  is  Powell's  "Animal 
Episodes."  No,  it  is  not  a  collection  of  dog- 
and-cat  anecdotes,  but  it  is  a  series  of  very 
singularly  told  stories  which  deal  with  the  ani- 
mal side  of  the  human,  and  which  you  will 
feel  have  an  entirely  new  flavor  if  you  have 
a  discriminating  palate.  The  book  came  out 
ten  years  ago,  and  is  utterly  unknown.  If  I 
can  point  to  three  in  one  small  shelf,  how  many 
lost  lights  must  be  flitting  in  the  outer  dark- 
ness! 

Let  me  hark  back  for  a  moment  to  the 
subject  with  which  I  began,  the  romance  of 
travel  and  the  frequent  heroism  of  modern 
life.  I  have  two  books  of  Scientific  Explora- 
tion here  which  exhibit  both  these  qualities  as 
strongly  as  any  I  know.  I  could  not  choose 
two  better  books  to  put  into  a  young  man's 
hands  if  you  wished  to  train  him  first  in  a 
gentle  and  noble  firmness  of  mind,  and  sec- 
ondly in  a  great  love  for  and  interest  in  all 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  245 
that  pertains  to  Nature.  The  one  is  Darwin's 
"Journal  of  the  Voyage  of  the  Beagle/'' 
Any  discerning  eye  must  have  detected  long 
before  the  "Origin  of  Species"  appeared, 
simply  on  the  strength  of  this  book  of  travel, 
that  a  brain  of  the  first  order,  united  with 
many  rare  qualities  of  character,  had  arisen. 
Never  was  there  a  more  comprehensive  mind. 
Nothing  was  too  small  and  nothing  too  great 
for  its  alert  observation.  One  page  is  occu- 
pied in  the  analysis  of  some  peculiarity  in  the 
web  of  a  minute  spider,  while  the  next  deals 
with  the  evidence  for  the  subsidence  of  a  con- 
tinent, and  the  extinction  of  a  myriad  ani- 
mals. And  his  sweep  of  knowledge  was  so 
great,  botany,  geology,  zoology,  each  lending 
its  corroborative  aid  to  the  other.  How  a 
youth  of  Darwin's  age — he  was  only  twenty- 
three  when  in  the  year  1831  he  started  round 
the  world  on  the  surveying  ship  Beagle — 
could  have  acquired  such  a  mass  of  informa- 
tion fills  one  with  the  same  wonder,  and  is  per- 
haps of  the  same  nature,  as  the  boy  musician 


246  THROUGH  THE  IMAGIC  DOOR 
who  exhibits  by  instinct  the  touch  of  the  mas- 
ter. Another  quahty  which  one  would  be  less 
disposed  to  look  for  in  the  savant  is  a  fine 
contempt  for  danger,  which  is  veiled  in  such 
modesty  that  one  reads  between  the  lines 
in  order  to  detect  it.  When  he  was  in  the 
Argentine,  the  country  outside  the  Settle- 
ments was  covered  with  roving  bands  of  horse 
Indians,  who  gave  no  quarter  to  any  whites. 
Yet  Darwin  rode  the  four  hundred  miles  be- 
tween Bahia  and  Buenos  Ayres,  when  even 
the  hardy  Gauchos  refused  to  accompany  him. 
Personal  danger  and  a  hideous  death  were 
small  things  to  him  compared  to  a  new  beetle 
or  an  undescribed  fly. 

The  second  book  to  which  I  alluded  is  Wal- 
lace's "Malay  Archipelago."  There  is  a 
strange  similarity  in  the  minds  of  the  two  men, 
the  same  courage,  both  moral  and  physical, 
the  same  gentle  persistence,  the  same  catholic 
knowledge  and  wide  sweep  of  mind,  the  same 
passion  for  the  observation  of  Nature.  Wal- 
lace by  a  flash  of  intuition  understood  and  de- 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  247 
scribed  in  a  letter  to  Darwin  the  cause  of  the 
Origin  of  Species  at  the  very  time  when  the 
latter  was  publishing  a  book  founded  upon 
twenty  years'  labor  to  prove  the  same  thesis. 
What  must  have  been  his  feelings  when  he 
read  that  letter!  And  yet  he  had  nothing  to 
fear,  for  his  book  found  no  more  enthusiastic 
admirer  than  the  man  who  had  in  a  sense  an- 
ticipated it.  Here  also  one  sees  that  Science 
has  its  heroes  no  less  than  Religion.  One  of 
Wallace's  missions  in  Papua  was  to  examine 
the  nature  and  species  of  the  Birds-of-Para- 
dise ;  but  in  the  course  of  the  years  of  his  wan- 
derings through  those  islands  he  made  a  com- 
plete investigation  of  the  whole  fauna.  A 
foot-note  somewhere  explains  that  the  Papu- 
ans who  lived  in  the  Bird-of -Paradise  country 
were  confirmed  cannibals.  Fancy  living  for 
years  with  or  near  such  neighbors!  Let  a 
young  fellow  read  these  two  books,  and  he 
cannot  fail  to  have  both  his  mind  and  his 
spirit  strengthened  by  the  reading. 


XII 

Here  we  are  at  the  final  seance.  For  the 
last  time,  my  patient  comrade,  I  ask  you  to 
make  yourself  comfortable  upon  the  old  green 
settee,  to  look  up  at  the  oaken  shelves,  and 
to  bear  with  me  as  best  you  may  while  I 
preach  about  their  contents.  The  last  time! 
And  yet,  as  I  look  along  the  lines  of  the  vol- 
umes, I  have  not  mentioned  one  out  of  ten  of 
those  to  which  I  owe  a  debt  of  gratitude,  nor 
one  in  a  hundred  of  the  thoughts  which  course 
through  my  brain  as  I  look  at  them.  As  well 
perhaps,  for  the  man  who  has  said  all  that  he 
has  to  say  has  invariably  said  too  much. 

Let  me  be  didactic  for  a  moment!  I 
assume  this  solemn — oh,  call  it  not  pedantic! 
— attitude  because  my  eye  catches  the  small 
but  select  corner  which  constitues  my  library 
of  Science.     I  wanted  to  say  that  if  I  were 

M8 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  249 
advising  a  young  man  who  was  beginning  life, 
I  should  counsel  him  to  devote  one  evening  a 
week  to  scientific  reading.  Had  he  the  perse- 
verance to  adliere  to  his  resolution,  and  if  he 
began  it  at  twenty,  he  would  certainly  find 
himself  with  an  unusually  well-furnished 
mind  at  thirty,  which  would  stand  him  in  right 
good  stead  in  whatever  line  of  life  he  might 
walk.  When  I  advise  him  to  read  science,  I 
do  not  mean  that  he  should  choke  himself  with 
the  dust  of  the  j)edants,  and  lose  himself  in 
the  subdivisions  of  the  Lepidoptera,  or  the 
classifications  of  the  dicotjdedonous  plants. 
These  dreary  details  are  the  prickly  bushes  in 
that  enchanted  garden,  and  you  are  foolish 
indeed  if  you  begin  your  walks  by  butting 
your  head  into  one.  Keep  very  clear  of  them 
until  you  have  explored  the  open  beds  and 
wandered  down  every  easy  path.  For  this 
reason  avoid  the  text-books,  which  repel,  and 
cultivate  that  popular  science  which  attracts. 
You  cannot  hope  to  be  a  specialist  upon  all 
these  varied  subjects.     Better  far  to  have  a 


250  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
broad  idea  of  general  results,  and  to  under- 
stand their  relations  to  each  other.  A  ^Try 
little  reading  will  give  a  man  such  a  ivnowl- 
edge  of  geology,  for  example,  as  will  make 
every  quarry  and  railway  cutting  an  object  of 
interest.  A  very  little  zoologj^  will  enable  you 
to  satisfy  your  curiosity  as  to  what  is  the 
proper  name  and  style  of  this  buff -ermine 
moth  which  at  the  present  instant  is  buzzing 
round  the  lamp.  A  very  little  botany  will  en- 
able you  to  recognize  every  flower  you  are 
likely  to  meet  in  your  walks  abroad,  and  to 
give  you  a  tiny  thrill  of  interest  when  you 
chance  upon  one  which  is  beyond  your  ken. 
A  very  little  archaeology  will  tell  you  all  about 
yonder  British  tumulus,  or  help  you  to  fill  in 
the  outline  of  the  broken  Roman  camp  upon 
the  downs.  A  very  little  astronomy  will 
cause  you  to  look  more  intently  at  the  heavens, 
to  pick  out  your  brothers  the  planets,  who 
move  in  your  own  circles,  from  the  stranger 
stars,  and  to  appreciate  the  order,  beauty,  and 
majesty  of  that  material  universe  which  is 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  251 
most  surely  the  outward  sign  of  the  spiritual 
force  behind  it.  How  a  man  of  science  can 
be  a  materialist  is  as  amazing  to  me  as  how 
a  sectarian  can  limit  the  possibilities  of  the 
Creator.  Show  me  a  picture  without  an  ar- 
tist, show  me  a  bust  without  a  sculptor,  show 
me  music  without  a  musician,  and  then  j^ou 
may  begin  to  talk  to  me  of  a  universe  without 
a  Universe-maker,  call  Him  by  what  name 
you  wall. 

Here  is  Flammarion's  "L'Atmosphere" — 
a  very  gorgeous  though  weather-stained  copy 
in  faded  scarlet  and  gold.  The  book  has  a 
small  history,  and  I  value  it.  A  young 
Frenchman,  dying  of  fever  on  the  west  coast 
of  Africa,  gave  it  to  me  as  a  professional  fee. 
The  sight  of  it  takes  me  back  to  a  little  ship's 
bunk,  and  a  sallow  face  with  large,  sad  eyes 
looking  out  at  me.  Poor  boy,  I  fear  that  he 
never  saw  his  beloved  Marseilles  again! 

Talking  of  popular  science,  I  know  no  bet- 
ter books  for  exciting  a  man's  first  interest, 
and  giving  a  broad  general  view  of  the  sub- 


252  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
ject,  than  these  of  Samuel  Laing.  Who 
would  have  imagined  that  the  wise  savant  and 
gentle  dreamer  of  these  volumes  was  also  the 
energetic  secretary  of  a  railway  company? 
Many  men  of  the  highest  scientific  eminence 
have  begun  in  prosaic  lines  of  life.  Herbert 
Spencer  was  a  railway  engineer.  Wallace 
was  a  land  surveyor.  But  that  a  man  with 
so  pronounced  a  scientific  brain  as  Laing 
should  continue  all  his  life  to  devote  his  time 
to  dull  routine  work,  remaining  in  harness 
until  extreme  old  age,  with  his  soul  still  open 
to  every  fresh  idea,  and  his  brain  acquiring 
new  concretions  of  knowledge,  is  indeed  a 
remarkable  fact.  Read  those  books,  and  you 
will  be  a  fuller  man. 

It  is  an  excellent  device  to  talk  about 
what  you  have  recently  read.  Rather  hard 
upon  your  audience,  you  may  say;  but  with- 
out wishing  to  be  personal,  I  dare  bet  it  is 
more  interesting  than  your  usual  small  talk. 
It  must,  of  course,  be  done  with  some  tact 
and  discretion.     It  is  the  mention  of  Laing's 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  253 
works  which  awoke  the  train  of  thought 
which  led  to  these  remarks.  I  had  met  some 
one  at  a  table  d'hote  or  elsewhere  who  made 
some  remark  about  the  prehistoric  remains  in 
the  valley  of  the  Somme.  I  knew  all  about 
those,  and  showed  him  that  I  did.  I  then 
threw  out  some  allusion  to  the  rock  temples 
of  Yucatan,  which  he  instantly  picked  up  and 
enlarged  upon.  He  spoke  of  ancient  Peru- 
vian civilization,  and  I  kept  well  abreast  of 
him.  I  cited  the  Titicaca  image,  and  he  knew 
all  about  that.  He  spoke  of  Quarternary  man, 
and  I  was  with  him  all  the  time.  Each  was 
more  and  more  amazed  at  the  fulness  and  the 
accuracy  of  the  information  of  the  other,  until 
like  a  flash  the  explanation  crossed  my  mind. 
"You  are  reading  Samuel  Laing's  'Human 
Origins'!"  I  cried.  So  he  was,  and  so  by  a 
coincidence  was  I.  We  were  pouring  water 
over  each  other,  but  it  was  all  new-drawn  from 
the  spring. 

There  is  a  big  two-volumed  book  at  the  end 
of  my  science  shelf  which  would,  even  now, 


254  TIIllOUGII  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
have  its  right  to  be  called  scientific  disputed 
by  some  of  the  pedants.  It  is  Myers'  "Hu- 
man Personality."  My  own  opinion,  for 
what  it  is  worth,  is  that  it  will  be  recognized 
a  century  hence  as  a  great  root  book,  one  from 
which  a  whole  new  branch  of  science  will  have 
sprung.  Where  between  four  covers  will 
you  find  greater  evidence  of  patience,  of 
industry,  of  thought,  of  discrimination,  of  that 
sweep  of  mind  which  can  gather  up  a  thousand 
separate  facts  and  bind  them  all  in  the  meshes 
of  a  single  consistent  system?  Darwin  has 
not  been  a  more  ardent  collector  in  zoology 
than  Myers  in  the  dim  regions  of  psychic  re- 
search, and  his  whole  hypothesis,  so  new  that 
a  new  nomenclature  and  terminology  had  to 
be  invented  to  express  it,  telepathy,  the  sub- 
liminal, and  the  rest  of  it,  will  always  be  a 
monument  of  acute  reasoning  expressed  in 
fine  prose,  and  founded  upon  ascertained  fact. 
The  mere  suspicion  of  scientific  thought  or 
scientific  methods  has  a  great  charm  in  any 
branch  of  literature,  however  far  it  may  be 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  255 
removed  from  actual  research.  Poe's  tales, 
for  example,  owe  much  to  this  effect,  though 
in  his  case  it  was  a  pure  illusion.  Jules  Verne 
also  produces  a  charmingly  credible  effect  for 
the  most  incredible  things  by  an  adept  use  of 
a  considerable  amount  of  real  knowledge  of 
nature.  But  most  gracefully  of  all  does  it 
shine  in  the  lighter  form  of  essay,  where  play- 
ful thoughts  draw  their  analogies  and  illus- 
trations from  actual  fact,  each  showing  up  the 
otlier,  and  the  combination  presenting  a  pecul- 
iar piquancy  to  the  reader. 

Where  could  I  get  a  better  illustration  of 
what  I  mean  than  in  those  three  little  volumes 
which  make  up  Wendell  Holmes'  immortal 
series,  "The  Autocrat,"  "The  Poet,"  and  "The 
Professor  at  the  Breakfast  Table"?  Here  the 
subtle,  dainty,  delicate  thought  is  continually 
reinforced  by  the  allusion  or  the  analogy  which 
shows  the  wide,  accurate  knowledge  behind  it. 
What  work  it  is,  how  wise,  how  witty,  how 
large-hearted  and  tolerant  I  Could  one  choose 
one's  philosopher  in  the  Elysian  fields,  as  once 


256  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
in  Athens,  I  would  surely  join  the  smiling 
group  who  listened  to  the  human,  kindly  words 
of  the  Sage  of  Boston.  I  suppose  it  is  just 
that  continual  leaven  of  science,  especially  of 
medical  science,  which  has  from  m}^  early  stu- 
dent days  given  those  books  so  strong  an  at- 
traction for  me.  Never  have  I  so  known  and 
loved  a  man  whom  I  had  never  seen.  It  was 
one  of  the  ambitions  of  my  lifetime  to  look 
upon  his  face,  but  by  the  irony  of  Fate  I  ar- 
rived in  his  native  city  just  in  time  to  lay  a 
wreath  upon  his  newly-turned  grave.  Read 
his  books  again,  and  see  if  you  are  not  espe- 
cially struck  by  the  up-to-dateness  of  them. 
Like  Tennyson's  "In  JNIemoriam"  it  seems  to 
me  to  be  work  which  sprang  into  full  flower 
fifty  years  before  its  time.  One  can  hardly 
open  a  page  haphazard  without  Hghting  upon 
some  passage  which  illustrates  the  breadth  of 
view,  the  felicity  of  phrase,  and  the  singular 
power  of  playful  but  most  suggestive  analogy. 
Here,  for  example,  is  a  paragraph — no  better 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  257 
than  a  dozen  others — which  combines  all  the 
rare  qualities — 

"Insanity  is  often  the  logic  of  an  accurate 
mind  overtasked.  Good  mental  machinery 
ought  to  break  its  own  wheels  and  levers,  if 
anything  is  thrust  upon  them  suddenly  which 
tends  to  stop  them  or  reverse  their  motion.  A 
weak  mind  does  not  accumulate  force  enough 
to  hurt  itself;  stupidity  often  saves  a  man 
from  going  mad.  We  frequently  see  persons 
in  insane  hospitals,  sent  there  in  consequence 
of  what  are  called  religious  mental  disturb- 
ances. I  confess  that  I  think  better  of  them 
than  of  many  who  hold  the  same  notions,  and 
keep  their  wits  and  enjoy  life  very  well,  out- 
side of  the  asylums.  Any  decent  person 
ought  to  go  mad  if  he  really  holds  such  and 
such  opinions.  .  .  .  Anything  that  is 
brutal,  cruel,  heathenish,  that  makes  life  hope- 
less for  the  most  of  mankind,  and  perhaps  for 
entire  races — anything  that  assumes  the  neces- 


258  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
sity  for  the  extermination  of  instincts  which 
were  given  to  be  regulated — no  matter  by  what 
name  you  call  it — no  matter  whether  a  fakir, 
or  a  monk,  or  a  deacon  believes  it — if  re- 
ceived, ought  to  produce  insanity^  in  every  well- 
regulated  mind." 


'to' 


There's  a  fine  bit  of  breezy  polemics  for  the 
dreary  fifties — a  fine  bit  of  moral  courage  too 
for  the  University  professor  who  ventured  to 
say  it. 

I  put  him  above  Lamb  as  an  essayist,  be- 
cause there  is  a  flavor  of  actual  knowledge  and 
of  practical  acquaintance  with  the  problems 
and  affairs  of  life,  which  is  lacking  in  the  elfin 
Londoner.  I  do  not  say  that  the  latter  is  not 
the  rarer  quality.  There  are  my  "Essays  of 
Elia,"  and  they  are  well-thumbed  as  you  see, 
so  it  is  not  because  I  love  Lamb  less  that  I 
love  this  other  more.  Both  are  exquisite,  but 
Wendell  Holmes  is  for  ever  touching  some 
note  which  awakens  an  answering  vibration 
within  my  own  mind. 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  259 
The  essay  must  always  be  a  somewhat  repel- 
lent form  of  literature,  unless  it  be  handled 
with  the  hghtest  and  deftest  touch.  It  is  too 
reminiscent  of  the  school  themes  of  our  boy- 
hood— to  put  a  heading  and  then  to  show  what 
you  can  get  under  it.  Even  Stevenson,  for 
whom  I  have  the  most  profound  admiration, 
finds  it  difficult  to  carry  the  reader  through  a 
series  of  such  papers,  adorned  with  his  orig- 
inal thought  and  quaint  turn  of  phrase.  Yet 
his  "Men  and  Books"  and  "Virginibus  Puer- 
isque"  are  high  examples  of  what  may  be  done 
in  spite  of  the  inherent  unavoidable  difficulty 
of  the  task. 

But  his  style!  Ah,  if  Stevenson  had  only 
realized  how  beautiful  and  nervous  was  his  own 
natural  God-given  style  he  would  never  have 
been  at  pains  to  acquire  another!  It  is  sad  to 
read  the  much-lauded  anecdote  of  his  imitat- 
ing this  author  and  that,  picking  up  and  drop- 
ping, in  search  of  the  best.  The  best  is 
always  the  most  natural.  When  Stevenson 
becomes  a  conscious  stylist,  applauded  by  so 


2G0  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
many  critics,  he  seems  to  me  like  a  man  who, 
having  most  natural  curls,  will  still  conceal 
them  under  a  wig.  The  moment  he  is  precious 
he  loses  his  grip.  But  when  he  will  abide  by 
his  own  sterling  Lowland  Saxon,  with  the  di- 
rect word  and  the  short,  cutting  sentence,  I 
know  not  where  in  recent  years  we  may  find 
his  mate.  In  this  strong,  plain  setting  the 
occasional  happy  word  shines  like  a  cut  jewel. 
A  really  good  stylist  is  like  Beau  Brummell's 
description  of  a  well-dressed  man — so  dressed 
that  no  one  would  ever  observe  him.  The  mo- 
ment you  begin  to  remark  a  man's  style  the 
odds  are  that  there  is  something  the  matter 
with  it.  It  is  a  clouding  of  the  crystal — a 
diversion  of  the  reader's  mind  from  the  matter 
to  the  manner,  from  the  author's  subject  to 
the  author  himself. 

No,  I  have  not  the  Edinburgh  edition.  If 
you  think  of  a  presentation — but  I  should  be 
the  last  to  suggest  it.  Perhaps  on  the  whole  I 
would  prefer  to  have  him  in  scattered  books, 
rather  than  in  a  complete  set.      The  half  is 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  261 
more  than  the  whole  of  most  authors,  and  not 
the  least  of  him.  I  am  sm^e  that  his  friends 
who  reverenced  his  memory  had  good  warrant 
and  express  instructions  to  publish  this  com- 
plete edition — very  possibly  it  was  arranged 
before  his  lamented  end.  Yet,  speaking  gen- 
erally, I  would  say  that  an  author  was  best 
served  by  being  very  carefull^r  pruned  before 
being  exposed  to  the  winds  of  time.  Let  every 
weak  twig,  every  immature  shoot  be  shorn 
away,  and  nothing  but  strong,  sturdy,  well- 
seasoned  branches  left.  So  shall  the  whole 
tree  stand  strong  for  years  to  come.  How 
false  an  impression  of  the  true  Stevenson 
would  our  critical  grandchild  acquire  if  he 
chanced  to  pick  down  any  one  of  half  a  dozen 
of  these  volumes!  As  we  watched  his  hand 
stray  down  the  rank  how  we  would  pray  that  it 
might  alight  upon  the  ones  we  love,  on  the 
"New  Arabian  Nights,"  "The  Ebb  Tide,"  "The 
Wrecker,"  "Kidnapped,"  or  "Treasure  Is- 
land." These  can  surely  never  lose  their 
charm. 


262       THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 

What  noble  books  of  their  class  are  those 
last,  "Kidnapped"  and  "Treasure  Island"! 
both,  as  you  see,  shining  forth  upon  my  lower 
shelf.  "Treasure  Island"  is  the  better  story, 
while  I  could  imagine  that  "Kidnaj^jped"  might 
have  the  more  permanent  value  as  being  an 
excellent  and  graphic  sketch  of  the  state  of 
the  Highlands  after  the  last  Jacobite  insurrec- 
tion. Each  contains  one  novel  and  admirable 
character,  Alan  Breck  in  the  one,  and  Long 
John  in  the  other.  Surely  John  Silver,  with 
his  face  the  size  of  a  ham,  and  his  little  gleam- 
ing eyes  like  crumbs  of  glass  in  the  center  of  it, 
is  the  king  of  all  seafaring  desperadoes.  Ob- 
serve how  the  strong  eiFect  is  produced  in  his 
case,  seldom  by  direct  assertion  on  the  part  of 
the  story-teller,  but  usually  by  comj)arison,  in- 
nuendo, or  indirect  reference.  The  objection- 
able Billy  Bones  is  haunted  by  the  dread  of 
"a  seafaring  man  with  one  leg."  Captain 
Flint,  we  are  told,  was  a  brave  man;  "he  was 
afraid  of  none,  not  he,  only  Silver — Silver 
was  that  genteel."      Or,  again,  where  John 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  263 
himself  says,  "there  was  some  that  was  feared 
of  Pew,  and  some  that  was  feared  of  Fhnt; 
but  FHnt  his  own  self  was  feared  of  meo 
Feared  he  was,  and  proud.  They  was  the 
roughest  crew  afloat  was  Flint's.  The  devil 
himself  would  have  been  feared  to  go  to  sea 
with  them.  Well,  now,  I  will  tell  you.  I'm 
not  a  boasting  man,  and  you  seen  yourself  how 
easy  I  keep  company;  but  when  I  was  quar- 
termaster, lambs  wasn't  the  word  for  Flint's 
old  buccaneers."  So  by  a  touch  here,  and  a 
hint  there,  there  grows  upon  us  the  individual- 
ity of  the  smooth-tongued,  ruthless,  masterful, 
one-legged  devil.  He  is  to  us  not  a  creation 
of  fiction,  but  an  organic  living  reality  with 
whom  w^e  have  come  in  contact;  such  is  the 
effect  of  the  fine  suggestive  strokes  with  which 
he  is  drawn.  And  the  buccaneers  themselves, 
how  simple,  and  yet  how  effective  are  the  little 
touches  which  indicate  their  ways  of  thinking 
and  of  acting.  "I  want  to  go  in  that  cabin, 
I  do;  I  want  their  pickles  and  wine  and  that." 
"Now,  if  you  had  sailed  along  o'  Bill  you 


264  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
wouldn't  have  stood  there  to  be  spoke  twice 
— not  you.  That  was  never  Bill's  way,  not 
the  way  of  sich  as  sailed  with  him."  Scott's 
buccaneers  in  "The  Pirate"  are  admirable,  but 
they  lack  something  human  which  we  find  here. 
It  will  be  long  before  John  Silver  loses  his 
place  in  sea  fiction,  "and  you  may  lay  to  that." 
Stevenson  was  deeply  influenced  by  Mere- 
dith, and  even  in  these  books  the  influence  of 
the  master  is  apparent.  There  is  the  apt  use 
of  an  occasional  archaic  or  unusual  word,  the 
short,  strong  descriptions,  the  striking  meta- 
phors, the  somewhat  staccato  fashion  of 
speech.  Yet,  in  spite  of  this  flavor,  they  have 
quite  individuality  enough  to  constitute  a 
school  of  their  own.  Their  faults,  or  rather 
perhaps  their  limitations,  lie  never  in  the  exe- 
cution, but  entirely  in  the  original  conception. 
They  picture  only  one  side  of  life,  and  that  a 
strange  and  exceptional  one.  There  is  no  fe- 
male interest.  We  feel  that  it  is  an  apothesis 
of  the  boy-story — the  penny  number  of  our 
youth  in  ecccelsis.     But  it  is  all  so  good,  so 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOIl  265 
fresh,  so  picturesque,  that,  however  Hmited  its 
scope,  it  still  retains  a  definite  and  well-assured 
place  in  hterature.  There  is  no  reason  why 
"Treasure  Island"  should  not  be  to  the  rising 
generation  of  the  twenty-first  century  what 
"Robinson  Crusoe"  has  been  to  that  of  the 
nineteenth.  The  balance  of  probability  is  all 
in  that  direction. 

The  modern  masculine  novel,  dealing  almost 
exclusively  with  the  rougher,  more  stirring 
side  of  life,  with  the  objective  rather  than  the 
subjective,  marks  the  reaction  against  the 
abuse  of  love  in  fiction.  This  one  phase  of  life 
in  its  orthodox  aspect,  and  ending  in  the  con- 
ventional marriage,  has  been  so  hackneyed  and 
worn  to  a  shadow,  that  it  is  not  to  be  wondered 
at  that  there  is  a  tendency  sometimes  to  swing 
to  the  other  extreme,  and  to  give  it  less  than  its 
fair  share  in  the  affairs  of  men.  In  British 
fiction  nine  books  out  of  ten  have  held  up  love 
and  marriage  as  the  be-all  and  end-all  of  hfe. 
Yet  we  know,  in  actual  practice,  that  this  may 
not  be  so.     In  the  career  of  the  average  man 


^66       THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 

his  marriage  is  an  incident,  and  a  momentous 
incident;  but  it  is  only  one  of  several.  He  is 
swayed  by  many  strong  emotions ;  his  business, 
his  ambitions,  his  friendshij)s,  his  struggles 
with  the  recurrent  dangers  and  difficulties 
which  tax  a  man's  wisdom  and  his  courage. 
Love  will  often  play  a  subordinate  part  in  his 
life.  How  many  go  through  the  world  with- 
out ever  loving  at  all?  It  jars  upon  us  then 
to  have  it  continually  held  up  as  the  predomi- 
nating, all-important  fact  in  life;  and  there  is 
a  not  unnatural  tendency  among  a  certain 
school,  of  which  Stevenson  is  certainly  the 
leader,  to  avoid  altogether  a  source  of  interest 
which  has  been  so  misused  and  overdone.  If 
all  love-making  were  like  that  between  Richard 
Feverel  and  Lucy  Desborough,  then  indeed  we 
could  not  have  too  much  of  it ;  but  to  be  made 
attractive  once  more  the  passion  must  be  han- 
dled by  some  great  master  who  has  courage  to 
break  down  conventionalities  and  to  go  straight 
to  actual  life  for  his  inspiration. 

The  use  of  the  novel  and  piquant  forms  of 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  267 
speech  is  one  of  the  most  obvious  of  Steven- 
son's devices.  No  man  handles  his  adjectives 
with  greater  judgment  and  nicer  discrimina- 
tion. There  is  hardly  a  page  of  his  work 
where  we  do  not  come  across  words  and  ex- 
pressions which  strike  us  with  a  pleasant  sense 
of  novelty,  and  yet  express  the  meaning  with 
admirable  conciseness.  "His  eyes  came  coast- 
ing round  to  me."  It  is  dangerous  to  begin 
quoting,  as  the  examples  are  interminable,  and 
each  suggests  another.  Now  and  then  he 
misses  his  mark,  but  it  is  very  seldom.  As  an 
example,  an  "eye-shot"  does  not  commend  it- 
self as  a  substitute  for  "a  glance,"  and  "to  tee- 
hee"  for  "to  giggle"  grates  somewhat  upon  the 
ear,  though  the  authority  of  Chaucer  might 
be  cited  for  the  expressions. 

Next  in  order  is  his  extraordinary  faculty 
for  the  use  of  pithy  similes,  which  arrest  the 
attention  and  stimulate  the  imagination. 
"His  voice  sounded  hoarse  and  awkward,  like 
a  rusty  lock."  "I  saw  her  sway,  like  some- 
thing stricken  by  the  wind."     "His  laugh  rang 


S68  TIIROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
false,  like  a  cracked  bell."  "His  voice  shook 
like  a  taut  rope."  "^ly  mind  flying  like  a 
weaver's  shuttle."  "His  blows  resounded  on 
the  grave  as  thick  as  sobs."  "The  private 
guilty  considerations  I  would  continually  ob- 
serve to  peep  forth  in  the  man's  talk  like  rab- 
bits from  a  hill."  Nothing  could  be  more 
effective  than  these  direct  and  homely  compari- 
sons. 

After  all,  however,  the  main  characteristic 
of  Stevenson  is  his  curious  instinct  for  saying 
in  the  briefest  space  just  those  few  words 
A\'hich  stamp  the  impression  upon  the  reader's 
mind.  He  will  make  you  see  a  thing  more 
clearly  than  you  would  probably  have  done 
had  your  eyes  actually  rested  upon  it.  Here 
are  a  few  of  these  word-pictures,  taken  hap- 
hazard from  among  hundreds  of  equal  merit — 

"Not  far  off  Macconochie  was  standing 
with  his  tongue  out  of  his  mouth,  and  his  hand 
upon  his  chin,  like  a  dull  fellow  thinking  hard. 

"Stewart  ran  after  us  for  more  than  a  mile, 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  269 
and  I  could  not  help  laughing  as  I  looked  back 
at  last  and  saw  him  on  a  hill,  holding  his  hand 
to  his  side,  and  nearly  burst  with  running. 

"Ballantrae  turned  to  me  with  a  face  all 
wrinkled  up,  and  his  teeth  all  showing  in  his 
mouth.  .  .  .  He  said  no  word,  but  his 
whole  appearance  was  a  kind  of  dreadful  ques- 
tion. 

"Look  at  him,  if  you  doubt;  look  at  him, 
grinning  and  gulping,  a  detected  thief. 

"He  looked  me  all  over  with  a  warlike  eye, 
and  I  could  see  the  challenge  on  his  lips." 

What  could  be  more  vivid  than  the  effect 
produced  by  such  sentences  as  these? 

There  is  much  more  that  might  be  said  as 
to  Stevenson's  peculiar  and  original  methods 
in  fiction.  As  a  minor  point,  it  might  be  re- 
marked that  he  is  the  inventor  of  what  may  be 
called  the  mutilated  villain.  It  is  true  that 
Mr.  Wilkie  Collins  has  described  one  gentle- 
man who  had  not  only  been  deprived  of  all  his 
limbs,  but  was  further  afflicted  by  the  insup- 


S70  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
portable  name  of  Miserrimus  Dexter.  Stev- 
enson, however,  has  used  the  effect  so  often, 
and  with  such  telhng  results,  that  he  may  be 
said  to  have  made  it  his  own.  To  say  nothing 
of  Hyde,  who  was  the  very  impersonation  of 
deformity,  there  is  the  horrid  blind  Pew,  Black 
Dog  with  two  fingers  missing,  Long  John 
with  his  one  leg,  and  the  sinister  catechist  who 
is  blind  but  shoots  by  ear,  and  smites  about 
him  with  his  staff.  In  "The  Black  Arrow," 
too,  there  is  another  dreadful  creature  who 
comes  tapping  along  with  a  stick.  Often  as 
he  has  used  the  device,  he  handles  it  so  artis- 
tically that  it  never  fails  to  produce  its  effect. 
Is  Stevenson  a  classic?  Well,  it  is  a  large 
word  that.  You  mean  by  a  classic  a  piece  of 
work  which  passes  into  the  permanent  litera- 
ture of  the  country.  As  a  rule  you  only  know 
your  classics  when  they  are  in  their  graves. 
Who  guessed  it  of  Poe,  and  who  of  Borrow? 
The  Roman  Catholics  only  canonize  their 
saints  a  century  after  their  death.  So  with 
our  classics.     The  choice  lies  with  our  grand- 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  271 
children.  But  I  can  hardly  think  that  healthy 
boys  will  ever  let  Stevenson's  books  of  adven- 
ture die,  nor  do  I  think  that  such  a  short  tale 
as  "The  Pavilion  on  the  Links"  nor  so  magnif- 
icent a  parable  as  "Dr.  Jekyll  and  Mr.  Hyde" 
will  ever  cease  to  be  esteemed.  How  well  I 
remember  the  eagerness,  the  delight  with  which 
I  read  those  early  tales  in  "Cornhill"  away  back 
in  the  late  seventies  and  early  eighties.  They 
were  unsigned,  after  the  old  unfair  fashion, 
but  no  man  with  any  sense  of  prose  could  fail 
to  know  that  they  were  all  by  the  same  author. 
Only  years  afterwards  did  I  learn  who  that 
author  was. 

I  have  Stevenson's  collected  poems  over 
yonder  in  the  small  cabinet.  Would  that  he 
had  given  us  more!  Most  of  them  are  the 
merest  playful  sallies  of  a  freakish  mind.  But 
one  should,  indeed,  be  a  classic,  for  it  is  in 
my  judgment  by  all  odds  the  best  narrative 
ballad  of  the  last  century — that  is  if  I  am 
right  in  supposing  that  "The  Ancient  Mar- 
iner" appeared  at  the  very  end  of  the  eight- 


272  THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR 
eenth.  I  would  put  Coleridge's  tour  de  force 
of  grim  fancy  first,  but  I  know  none  other  to 
compare  in  glamour  and  phrase  and  easy  power 
with  "Ticonderoga."  Then  there  is  his  im- 
mortal epitaj^h.  The  two  i:)ieces  alone  give 
him  a  niche  of  his  own  in  our  poetical  litera- 
ture, just  as  his  character  gives  him  a  niche 
of  his  own  in  our  affections.  No,  I  never  met 
him.  But  among  my  most  prized  possessions 
are  several  letters  which  I  received  from  Sa- 
moa. From  that  distant  tower  he  kept  a  sur- 
prisingly close  watch  upon  what  was  doing 
among  the  bookmen,  and  it  was  his  hand 
which  was  among  the  first  held  out  to  the 
striver,  for  he  had  quick  appreciation  and  keen 
sympathies  which  met  another  man's  work  half 
way,  and  wove  into  it  a  beauty  from  his  own 
mind. 

And  now,  my  very  patient  friend,  the  time 
has  come  for  us  to  part,  and  I  hope  my  little 
sermons  have  not  bored  you  over -much.  If 
I  have  put  37'ou  on  the  track  of  anything  which 
you  did  not  know  before,  then  verify  it  and 


THROUGH  THE  MAGIC  DOOR  273 
pass  it  on.  If  I  have  not,  there  is  no  harm 
done,  save  that  my  breath  and  your  time  have 
been  wasted.  There  may  be  a  score  of  mis- 
takes in  what  I  have  said — is  it  not  the  privi- 
lege of  the  conversationahst  to  misquote?  Mjr 
judgments  may  differ  very  far  from  yours, 
and  my  hkings  may  be  your  abhorrence;  but 
the  mere  thinking  and  talking  of  books  is  in 
itself  good,  be  the  upshot  what  it  may.  For 
the  time  the  magic  door  is  still  shut.  You  are 
still  in  the  land  of  faerie.  But,  alas,  though 
you  shut  that  door,  you  cannot  seal  it.  Still 
come  the  ring  of  the  bell,  the  call  of  the  tele- 
phone, the  summons  back  to  the  sordid  world 
of  work  and  men  and  daily  strife.  Well, 
that's  the  real  life  after  all — this  only  the  imi- 
tation. And  yet,  now  that  the  portal  is  wide 
open  and  we  stride  out  together,  do  we  not 
face  our  fate  with  a  braver  heart  for  all  the 
rest  and  quiet  and  comradeship  that  we  found 
behind  the  Magic  Door? 

THE  END 


INDEX 


Addison,  Joseph,  7,  13,  133  Forrest,  R.  E.,  243 

Allen,  Grant,  133  Frederic,  Harold,  46 

Arnold,  Matthew,  quoted,  19,  Froissart,  218-225 

20  Froude,  J.  A.,  208 


Balzac,  96 

Barr,  Robert,  107 

Borrow,  George,  94-106,  138- 

9;  quoted,  100-105;  180-1 
Boswell,    51-54,    63,    QG,    80; 

quoted,  55-9,  62 
Brontes,  the,  95 
Browning,  Robert,  46 
BuUen,  F.  T.,  238-340 
Burney,  Miss,  140,  155 
Burns,  Robert,  45 
Byron,  Lord,  9,  45 

Carlyle,  Thomas,  8,   159-160; 

quoted,  21 
Cellini,  Benvenuto,  87,  88,  134 
Coleridge,  S.  T.,  272;  quoted, 

21 
Collingwood's     Letters,     204 ; 

quoted,  204 
Collins,  Wilkie,  269 
Conrad,  Joseph,  241 
Crane,  Stephen,  46 

Darwin,  Charles,  245-6 
Daudet,  Alphonse,  48 
Dickens,  Charles,  29,  47,  116 
Dumas,  Alexander,  96 


Gibbon,  Edward,  8,  59,  61, 
69-88;  quoted,  81-83 

Goldsmith,  Oliver,  61,  140, 
155-6;  quoted,  22 

Gray,  Thomas,  59 

Greely,  A.  W.,  235-6 

Gronow,  Capt.,  169,  193 

Hardy,  Thomas,  157 
Harte,  Bret,  116,  119 
Hawthorne,  Nathaniel,  123 
Heine,  Heinrich,  48 
Henley,  W.  E.,  215-218 
Hogarth,  William,  146 
Holmes,  Wendell,  26,  255-258 
Houssaye,  A.,  171,  191-2 
Howe,  Julia  Ward,  32 
Hugo,  Victor,  27 
Hume,  David,  67 

Irving,  Henry,  95 

Irving,  Washington,  227-8 

Jeflfreys,  Judge,  37 
Johnson,  Samuel,  9-13,  51-68, 
82-3,  156;  quoted,  58-60 

Kipling,  Rudyard,  121-2,  241 


Fielding,  Henry,  116,  140-155       Laing,  Samuel,  252-3 
Fitchett,  Dr.,  187  Lamb,  Charles,  258 

Flammarion,  C,  251  Lecky,  W.  E.  H.,  208 

275 


276 


INDEX 


Lockhart,  J.  G.,  40,  43,  49 
London,  Jack,  241 
Lytton,  Biilwer,  123 

Macaulay,  Lord,  8-11,  13,  17, 

19,   22,  52-3,   GO,   144,   208; 

quoted,  12,  15-16,  19 
McCarthy,  Justin,  208 
Marbot's       Memoirs,       168-9, 

172-3 
Marryatt,  Capt.,  241 
Maupassant,  G.  de,  125-9 
Maxwell's  "Wellington,"  187- 

188 
Melville,  Herman,  241-3 
Mercer's  Recollections,  185-7; 

quoted,  182-3 
Meredith,  George,  157-8,  264, 

quoted,  160-2 
Merriman,  H.  S.,  47 
Myers'  "  Human  Personality," 

254 

Napier's    "  Peninsular    War," 

184-5 
Napoleon   Buonaparte,   174-8, 

196-202;   quoted,  62 
Nelson,  Lord,  30 
Norris,  Frank,  46 

Parkman,  F.,  209-14 
PajTi,  James,  quoted,  26 
Pepys,  Samuel,  87-93 
Poe,    Edgar    Allan,    116-119, 

124-5,     128,     255;     quoted, 

130-1 
Powell's   "Animal  Episodes," 

244 
"  Pugilistica,"  107-115 

Quiller-Couch,  A.  T.,  124 
Reade,  Charles,  116,  131-6 


R^musat,    Madame    de,    199- 

200 
Richardson,  Samuel,  140-154 
Rogers,  Samuel,  46 
Rousseau,  J.  J.,  59,  86,  88 
Russell,  W.  Clark,  241 

Scott,  Capt.  R.  F.,  233-4 
Scott,  Sir  Walter,  18,  23,  25- 
30,  33-40,  64,   116,   138-139, 
149,  196,  264 
Sevigne,  Madame  de,  205-6 
Shakespeare,    William,    4,   27, 

47,  59,  168 
Shelley,  P.  B.,  45 
Sheridan,  R.  B.,  quoted,  161 
Siborne's  "Letters,"  192 
Smollett,  T.,  136-143,  153-3 
Snaith's    "  Broke    of    Coven- 
den,"  243 
Southey,  Robert,  9,  106 
Spencer,  Herbert,  252 
Sterne,  Lawrence,  140,  155 
Stevenson,   Robert   Louis,   47, 
116,     120-2,     241,     259-264, 
266-273;       quoted,       262-4, 
267-9 
Swift,  Jonathan,  7,  59 

Taine,  Henri,  197-8 
Tennyson,  Lord,  46,  256 
Thackeray,    W.    M.,    28,    47, 

116,  132,  159 
Tolstoi,  Comte  Leon,  133 
Trollope,  Anthony,  86 

Verne,  Jules,  255 
Voltaire,  F.  Arouet  de,  59 

Wallace,  A.  R.,  246-7 
Wellington,  Duke  of,  186-195, 

198;  quoted,  190 
Wells,  H.  G.,  124 
Wordsworth,  William,  46 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


CENTRAL  UNIVERSITY ^^.f^.^O^^^ 

University  of  California,  San  Diego 

DATE  DUE 


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APR  1  4  iSBi 


■^.y 


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UCSD  Libr. 


